January 24, 2008

Zella Sobel

Zella's father came from Warsaw, Poland in 1905, arriving through Galveston with four children after his first wife died. His sister, living in Waco, Texas, told him a tailor was needed there. In 1908 he sent for a woman he had never met, who bravely made the ocean voyage to marry him. The family grew up poor but rooted in a small Jewish community in Waco, attending an Orthodox synagogue and observing the holidays. Zella recalled her mother buying meat cheaply, making meatballs and soup, and the neighborhood so close-knit that neighbors would send her home to her mother.

In Waco, Zella attended school and Hebrew school under Rabbi Blumenthal, whom she remembered fondly. She became active in Young Judaea and a champion debater, winning her high school and regional contests and then a state debate championship, which earned a four-year scholarship to Baylor University. She could not accept it because her father was ill, so she attended business school and worked for the Waco News Tribune. She met Isaac Sobel, five years her senior, at a Young Judaea convention when she was fourteen, and after courting for five years they married and settled in Dallas.

In Dallas the Sobels first lived on Grand Avenue and later joined Shearith Israel, buying a home on Stanford. Isaac dealt in unclaimed freight and opened a paint and wallpaper store on Elm Street. Inspired by a friend's beautiful table setting, Zella taught herself to cook and gradually became a sought-after caterer, preparing food for weddings, brisses, and bar mitzvahs, even though her husband disliked how hard she worked. She endured deep losses, including an infant daughter and her daughter Gail to cancer, and welcomed her daughter Marcia's husband Fred, who converted to Judaism. Devoted to her faith and community, Zella cherished her nearly fifty-year marriage and remained proud to call Dallas home.

She and Isaac lacked one week of being married fifty years when he died.

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