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Hi, my name is Sara Davidson and I'm a student intern with the Houston Jewish History Archive at Rice University today is June 8, 2022. And I am joined by Hyman Pen, how are you today? I'm doing good. Great. I'm so excited that you're joining me today

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to talk about your family store of survival. And the many years you spent involved in the Jewish community in Houston. So let's fight for talking a little bit about your family's history. Perhaps beginning with your grandmother and her life in eastern europe. Sure, my grandmother and

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mother were from the town of Grodno Poland, a town of about 50,000. It's now in uh Belarus and it had a vibrant jewish community. I think 40% of the population was jewish. They had many synagogues and jewish newspapers, jewish theaters and libraries, just a very active

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jewish community. Uh, My uh, my grandmother's husband, Higham, who I'm named after, had a dry cleaning business in, in the town. And my grandmother was religiously from bialystock Poland and moved to Grodno to mary her husband. My mother also had a brother, younger brother joseph. My

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mother's name was luba and my grandmother was riva riva and Poland and they had a, you know, very loving family. Uh, and, and you know very, I think probably a middle class family and my grandmother stayed home taking care of the Children and she was the

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homemaker while her husband worked? Well, that's really interesting. Um, can you tell me a little bit further about what your mother's childhood was like. Yeah, she had, you know, loving childhood. You know, she was very young. You know when Hitler took power in in in Germany,

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she was born in 1927. And uh and you know everything kind of came crashing down on september 1st 1939 when World War Two started, they were um living in their home, a nice home and and their home became part of the ghetto eventually. So they were

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living in one of two ghettos in Grodno and life was just terrible in the ghettos. Until uh you know one day in 1943 they ordered all the jews living in A group of the Jews living in the Ghetto to report to the synagogue next day. I

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think it was about 2500 people. And they reported to the synagogue where they stayed overnight and then were taken to the rail station where they, my mother and grandmother and her, her my mother's father and little brother were put on a train in a box car

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and taken to Treblinka. And when they got out of the rail car, I remember my mother telling me there was so much commotion uh and guards were screaming at them, you go here you go there you go, here you go there and they told my mother

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and grandmother to go in one direction and they told my mother's father and little brother to go in another direction and that was the last time that my mother saw her father and little brother, they went straight to the gas chambers, my mother and grandmother were

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also in line for the gas chambers, they didn't know what was going on yet. And in line my mother saw a friend of hers who her parents were sent in the other direction. And so my grandmother kind of took Vivian under her wing and they ended

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up staying together throughout their holocaust experience. But while they were all three in line for the gas chambers, a guard came up and made them come with him basically and they were taken away. They needed 100 women and three physicians to go to another camp. So

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they took my mother, grandmother and Vivian to to another camp to Majdanek and they stayed there overnight and then went from there to another camp, There was a sub camp of Majdanek food plots. And then from there they went on to multiple camps. My mother and

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grandmother and Vivian, they were in nine different camps, which is very unusual, including Auschwitz birkenau and Bergen Bells and in Terezin stat from which they were liberated, they were in a sub camp of book involved where they worked on aircraft engines. So they had all kinds

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of experiences and you know, just really a story of survival and and luck and they prayed every day hoping you know for for freedom, which finally happened in 1945. Wow, that is quite an amazing story and really a sad one too about um you know, her

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family's journey. So from there, how did, how did your parents meet? Well, my father was also a holocaust survivor. If I could just tell you a little bit about his story, He was from a little town in Lithuania called Wilco viscous. Uh and a town of

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about 10,000 people, 40% of that community was jewish also and he lived there with his parents uh and he had two older brothers. One of his brothers, joseph for Meyer, joseph was was married uh to Rika who who came from Poland. His parents I guess sent

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her thinking it would be safer in Lithuania. Uh and she came as a teenager to milk a viscous and ended up getting married to, to joseph, he was in the military in Lithuania. And And they had also a little sister. The family had a store that

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catered to the farmers, kind of farmers supply store and the Christian community was very involved in farming. And so if you needed something from your farm, you went to the pen store and and could purchase it there. So they knew a lot of the, these Christian

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farmers one day in 1941, it was the summer of 1941, they, they were already living in a ghetto in their, their little village and they ordered all the jewish men to come out and they marched all the jewish men, including my father and his brothers and

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his father to the outskirts of town and they picked my father and one of his brothers joseph Meyer, joseph to work in a building, sorting all the belongings because the men were told to pack all your belongings, I guess they were going to be moving them,

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so take whatever you needed. And and my father and joseph job in this barrack that they were put into were to sort through all the different clothing and the other men were told to dig a big pit, a big ditch outside the barrack. And so they

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worked on that including his other brother, Rafael and his father, mordechai and my father while they were sorting through the clothes, clothing of all the jewish men found his father's jacket and he started searching through the pockets of his jacket and he found a photograph of

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his parents, a little passport size photograph that he put in his pocket. And unbeknownst to him it would become the only possession that he had of his family from before. The holocaust. And he carried this photograph with him the rest of his life. And now it's

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actually it's on display at the holocaust museum used in a copy of it and the original is in the archives at the museum. So when they, when they realized, you know, you know, they were going through all the clothing and they realized something was going on

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outside. My father heard commotion and he looked out the window and in that pit that all the men were digging. He saw his father and brother lined up in front of the pit along with all the other jewish men of the town. And then it was

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almost like a firing squad. My father said one bullet went through five individuals and this was done by not only the Nazi ss but by the Lithuanian police. My father said by the collaborators and he watched as all the jewish men including his father and brother,

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were murdered. And when they saw this, they realized that they had to go into hiding. They went back home, got their mother and little sister and then they contacted some of the farmers that had hidden them during the war and asked them would you hide us?

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And some of them said yes and they hid them on different farms and uh they were able to survive farm the farm unfortunately, uh my father's mother and little sister were caught and and murdered but my father, His brother Joseph and Joseph's wife, Rika were able

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to survive thanks to these Christian farmers. And then you asked how my mother met. So they were finally liberated in 4th 1940 for before the end of the war by the Russians and my father eventually ended up in a displaced persons camp and his brother brother's

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wife at another camp and my father would go visit his brother in a camp in Austria called uh Dagestan and their next door neighbor, his brother and sister in law's next door neighbor was my mother and grandmother. So he met them by that time they had

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a daughter that was born after the war. And my future mother, his future bride took care of, enjoyed taking care of the little girl and my father like that and remembered that and uh they both eventually immigrated to the United States and then got hooked up.

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My father was trying to, my mother was trying to get to Israel with her mother with my grandmother and and just couldn't, there were a lot of roadblocks, they were able to sneak into italy and then they didn't get anywhere there. They ended up in another

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displaced persons camp in Cremona and they ended up coming to the United States. But my father was trying to get somewhere to, he had relatives in South Africa but there was a quotas, they couldn't get him in for a while and they said did you know

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how you have relatives in Houston texas? Why don't you go there and see how it is, if you don't like it, you can come to South Africa. And my father said where is Houston texas? He had never heard of it, But that's what he eventually did

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a family named the Payne family that's still in Houston today Jenny pain was the matriarch of the family and I remember she was one of the oldest persons I ever met as a child. And it turned out she was born in like 1865. So she was

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pretty old when I met probably in her 90's when I met her as a little boy. But the pain families was just so wonderful to my father, you know, getting him settled, helping him learn english and and find a job. Eventually find a place to live.

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And in the following year my mother immigrated to new york city through boston and my father heard she's there from his sister in law. He went to visit her in the winter and didn't realize you needed a coat in the winter in new york city living

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in Houston but they fell in love. She came to visit him in Houston in, in the summer with no air conditioning. So it must have been through love that they decided to get married and Were married in Brooklyn New York in December of 1951. Mm Nutshell.

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Their, their story. Yeah, that is such a fascinating story that they know that journey they took together, you know, despite all the odds, they ended up together. Um what was their decision for staying in Houston? Well, you know, he had family there. His brother actually came

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the year my father came in 1949 and in 1950 his brother Joseph and Rika came with Sandra to Houston and settled there. So he had family now in Houston plus the extended family he was able to get a job which he liked. And Houston was very

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welcoming to Holocaust survivors. There were a lot of refugees coming into Houston. About 1000 holocaust survivors eventually made Houston their home. So you know he had people that he could relate to and and became friends with. And and then when they got married they started their

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life and Houston was their own for the rest of their lives. Wow, that's great. Um kind of come going on from there. What was your Jewish upbringing like in this like Houston's Jewish community? Yeah, I was born in 1950 for uh and and at three years

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of age my father had an opportunity to, this is a little digression before Houston, but it's with the Jewish community that we joined. Uh He had an opportunity to buy a store in a town called New gulf texas which is in Wharton County warden is about

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60 miles down 59 from from Houston. Uh And we were the only jewish family in this town. But the synagogue sharing with Israel Was located in Warden, a small synagogue, probably less than 100 families. But it was a lovely Jewish community and families came from all

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the surrounding towns around warden like Bay City in El Campo and Edna and we came from from new Gulf about 14 miles away. So you know we uh I started a religious school there probably when I was about six and started Hebrew school I think in

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fourth grade with Rabbi Israel Rosen Rosenberg who was the rabbi in, in the synagogue. But it was just a very warm community. And New Golf was a wonderful place to live too. It was a sulfur producing town. It produced the most sulfur than any mine in

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the world and I think it may still hold that record, texas gulf, sulfur owned it. And we were probably about the only family that one of the few families that lived there did did not work for the company. It was a company owned town and you

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had to get permission from the company to live there when I was about, my brother was born right before we moved there and in New Golf, my and my brother robert who is three years younger than me and then my sister who's about 9.5 years younger

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than the, I was born in at the end of 1963 in New Golf in the little hospital, tiny little hospital with there were two physicians in the town and after she was born we were in kind of cramped conditions, the three kids were in one bedroom

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and my parents were in the other. So it was a small little apartment that we lived in in the back of the store actually that we didn't even have our own home and my parents realized they really wanted us to have a stronger jewish identity. And

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when I was in sixth grade, right before starting sixth grade, we moved to Houston and kind of developed roots there. We joined congregation Beth you sure, in which my parents had belonged to I guess after they got married. And and that's where I had my bar

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mitzvah lessons. And eventually in july 1967 had my bar mitzvah at Beth assurance. And then I continued my jewish studies in the Hillel program at Beth assure in uh for high school students. And then that was very involved in the neighbor with youth organization, B B

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Y O. The Cyrus Adler, A C A was the chapter that I belonged to and eventually even became president of that chapter and was very involved with that. And even went to Israel at the end of my junior year in high school with the jewish federation,

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they had a, What they call the pilgrimage where students from Houston went to Israel, I think that year there were about 50 of us that went for like 66 or seven weeks uh to Israel and included a stop over in London and new york city. So

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it was a great, great trip and uh and made lifelong friends and a love for Israel from, from that, from that trip. He told me a little bit more about that trip and what it was like and you know, kind of what it was like the

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first time you went to Israel Yeah, I mean it was a great, great experience, you know, it was just kind of learning more about my parents holocaust story right before that, so just the connection to be in Israel, you know there was a place that all

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jews were welcome was just you know was very comforting thought for me and it was just a great experience I had, we have some very close distant relatives that actually immigrated to Mexico. Originally, their families immigrated to Mexico from europe and then one of the sisters

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and her family immigrated to Israel and some of the Children were around my age, so I would spend the weekends with them, very orthodox family and it was just a neat experience getting to see life from the orthodox side of Judaism and spend time with them

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on weekends and and then the rest of the time we were traveling all over Israel and it was an intense trip and we did did so much, you know, to spend six weeks as a teen was just a very rewarding experience. Oh that's really interesting. I

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yeah, what a great opportunity you had um so what was your involvement like in the jewish community as you got older? After high school? Well after, after high school, I attended the University of texas at Austin for college and And I had graduated from Westbury High

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School by the way in 1972 and I right away started uh going attending Hillel at at the University of Texas campus. And one of the reasons I was drawn to the Hillel there is because the rabbi there, I I first met him when he was my

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judo instructor at summer camp Rabbi Jimmy Kessler, who would go on to become a rabbi at the reform congregation in the Galveston's for many, many years. But he got his start as the Hillel rabbi and hell director and he just he's just a wonderful person and

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I loved going to services and I even took a class with him and and took it his ship at hell. Well trying to to learn what my parents would not teach me because they were trying to make us americans I guess and and and didn't teach

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us their native tongue, but it was a great experience. I even substitute taught in religious schools and and one of the synagogues in in Austin when I when I was there, wow, what was that experience like doing the substitute teaching? It was fun. You know, I

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you know, basically they didn't have a curriculum for me so I could kind of teach what I wanted to. So I I think one time I spoke about Israel and talked about my experiences there and and it was a fun experience. Yeah, that's great. Um Tell

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me a little bit more about your later experience as the President of Temple Beth Torah and how you came into that position? Yeah. Just to go chronologically. I guess I went from Austin. I went to medical school in san Antonio at the University of Texas Medical

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School there. And and from there I went to Galveston's uh to the University of Texas Medical branch where I did my pediatric residency. And I didn't, I attended services occasionally but not as much in Galveston's just because of my my busy schedule. But I would go

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off into Houston for for services. But there I met my wife to be in Galveston's. She was a nurse and we had a mutual friend. My wife was planning actually planning a trip to Israel before I had even met her and she was a travel agency

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in Galveston's. And one of the women that worked for her, she was a nursing supervisor, heard or overheard her in the travel agency because she was planning a trip also and heard that she was planning a trip to Israel. She said she may be jewish and

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I know high pen was also jewish and maybe they would like to get together. So she set up a meeting with lisa lisa set up a meeting with my future wife Lynn in her office and Lynn didn't know what the meeting was about but lisa came

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in and asked can I ask a personal question and her question was are you jewish and Lynn said yes I am. Well I have a nice jewish boy if you're interested. And she said, sure, which I'm glad she did. And about six months later I had

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the nerve to ask her out and the rest is history. Uh got married in 1988 but I moved to to Kingwood texas after I finished my residency in Galveston's. Uh to start, I joined a pediatric group, humble pediatric associates that later would become part of texas

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Children's Pediatrics, which is part of Texas Children's Hospital in Houston. But when I got there, I, you know, one of the first things I did, even though we're probably less than an hour away from Houston, you know, there was a jewish community that had just started

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and a synagogue, it didn't have its own building yet named Temple Beth Torah. And later that, I guess that later that year that I arrived when my wife was visiting me, we went to Shabbat services and just fell in love with the people there, just a

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warm welcoming community. They were meeting in the Episcopal Church at the time in in Houston and they had a bit, you know, for the name of the synagogue temple. They had a big t which I didn't realize at first was the cross of the church, but

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but and they had a little portable arc that they would roll out from the closet. But it was really a warm, warm group of people that we really got to know and befriend. and we eventually got her own building. I became more involved and on the

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board and was on the board of the synagogue For many, many, many years and still am. Uh and it's just a wonderful group of people. We have about 86 families. I've served as President three different times. And if you would like to be president of our

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synagogue, I'm sure we can make it happen. But we do everything ourselves pretty much rabbi Dan Gordon as our spiritual leader. But we really don't have a bunch of employees. So it's us that clean the flowerbeds out and work in the building. We even had had

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people from the congregation help. It was a foreclosed daycare center that we bought and the members built the walls and put it together and turned this foreclosed daycare center into a synagogue that we're still using today. Huh. I did not know that. That's a great place.

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Yeah. Um What were some of your most important experiences while on the board at temple? That's tora, well, we've, you know, we were very small but we really have some have had some amazing programs and guest speakers and excuse me, I've done some just amazing things

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over the years. We've had wonderful retreats and celebrating bar mitzvah lifecycle events. Um, and you know when you're, it's a little different when you're on a hands on experience on my key chain. If I would go get my keys and show you I have a key

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on my key chain that opens the toilet paper and the paper towel dispensers. And I am in charge of making sure we always have toilet paper in our dispensers. So that's the hands on that I'm talking about. And when you start getting hands on, you really

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get ownership in in the organization and that's I think a special part of being involved with a small synagogue like it. I was there today watering plants and doing some minor things. So we all participate. Um we had an interesting thing one time just uh yeah,

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uh I was at the synagogue before we started just getting things set up and outside. I noticed this woman and a young teenage girl probably they had a bunch of carnations and they were walking around with the carnations and I didn't know who they were yet.

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I thought they were going to be coming in, but they didn't come in. But when we, when the services ended, we came out and there was a carnation on every car in our parking lot and in our driveway and against the door and each carnation had

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a sign and I'll see if you can see this. That's very cute. I'm grateful to share the planet with you and you know, just you know, in today's world, what's going on to have this on our door in a community where there's a few jews in

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the humble, humble area, a few jews and and you know, we're overwhelmed by churches to have somebody leave a message like that. It was, it was a very special moment. But it's it's definitely a special place. We've had rabbi Gordon as our spiritual leader for over

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25 years probably. And he's definitely the rock of our of our existence and it's just a great place to be. Just this past weekend. I tutored the bar Mitzvah boy over the past year and just to see how he came along was very rewarding personally for

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for me. So just you get to do things in a small congregation that you just don't get to experience in a larger one. Yeah. It seems like such a great like engaged community of jewish people. I just, it just sounds like such a rewarding experience, you

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know, working and being part of that community. So kind of on that note over the past few years, there's been a lot of, you know, everything has gone virtual covid. So what was helping to run the congregation like during covid? Yeah, we had to make some,

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you know, real quick decisions like probably most congregations had to do and we had no virtual setup. We actually, once we're able to stream services, we had the a former member, the son of a former member. He was a former member I guess who was in

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in, I think he was in. I'm forgetting where he was stationed overseas. It was in Afghanistan, but somewhere like that and we were able to broadcast our high holiday services to him. So we have done that but we've never done regular broadcasting our services, but we

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really pivoted. We had some people that kind of knew what to do and we we really blossomed uh with it, you know, for a while we were totally closed and had no activities inside the building. So we were all virtual from the rabbi's home basically. But

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one thing we started doing is uh is getting people from really all over the United States, not a lot of people, but a few people that are jewish singers or Cantorial soloist or Canter's to join us. We had a flyer from Nashville Tennessee who became one

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of our favorites in Akira from los Angeles California. Uh you know, we just had people we had and we started getting guests from all over the place from from maine to California. And even from Toronto and Mexico City, we had people attending our services and I

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think even to this day we're still doing virtual services. And and you know, we're slowly increasing our in person attendance. But we definitely still have more people watching virtually. And many of them aren't even members of our of our synagogue, they just enjoy coming and and

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and tune in to us. So it's been kind of a neat experience and we've been able to experience different voices of people that that aren't even uh from the area. Uh this past year canter francine Davis Jacobs joined as for high holidays. And she's been with

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us for a number of uh of our services locally. But plus these other out of town guests has made it kind of a kind of a different and unique experience for us. One of the things that we also did uh you know, there was a lack

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of contact for all the synagogues for everybody during Covid and we're part Temple Beth Torah is part of a group called the humble area assistance ministries. We're one of the covenant members and on their founding members and it's a support system for people in the humble

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texas and surrounding areas to help them anywhere. They have a food pantry and they have financial support and and they have training for people to help them get jobs and learn english and this and that. So we're very involved with them. Were also involved with family

00:32:51.590 - 00:33:12.780

time which is a predominantly women and Children support group organization, mainly for people of domestic violence and they have a shelter in our community where a lot of our members go and volunteer and we during the pandemic, we started once a month would have a drive

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by event where we would ask for supplies for food and then we would find out what the shelter needed, found out a list of those needed items to our congregants and people would drive by pop the trunk. We would take the items out of the trunk

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and then we typically would have some sort of special treat for them if it was from Houston. Uh, pecan company that's owned by someone in the jewish community whose father was the holocaust survivor. Uh, just something to connect them with the jewish community. So we would

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let them leave with a treat, so entice them to come by. But that was very successful. We collected lots of food in a two hour period and lots of supplies that were needed for these organizations. So that was something that was very successful and fun to

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do. Uh, and rewarding to do. Yeah, that seems like such a great community initiative. Um, yeah, so, uh, I know you're a docent at the Holocaust Museum of Houston. I wanted to know about like what that experience has been like and how you got involved. Yeah,

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it's been a wonderful experience. I became a dose and about 13 years ago my wife had been a dose and already for a few years and I wanted to be able to continue my parents legacy and I thought this would be a great way. And I,

00:34:39.730 - 00:34:55.780

uh, and I said I just need to do it. It was hard with my schedule, but work schedule. But I just said it's time for me to do it. And it was just a wonderful experience and and met met so many just wonderful people who are

00:34:55.780 - 00:35:15.180

docents and volunteers at holocaust museum used and, and it's just very rewarding to, to tell the story of the holocaust of people that may know about it, but may not know much about it. And I was volunteering last night and this one woman I was talking

00:35:15.180 - 00:35:32.190

to, I mean she was just weeping as I was telling her stories and you know, I really connected with her and that, that's the fun part and the exciting part of being at the museum where you connect with people and hopefully making a distant difference in

00:35:32.190 - 00:35:55.850

their perspective on things and how we all have to work hard in this world to make it a better place to live. I became a dose and uh in 19 or 2009 and my father came to my graduation and he was talking to all the other

00:35:55.850 - 00:36:14.510

doses that had graduated and telling them stories and he was so proud of all of us and he took pictures with us and then two days after, after the ceremony where I became a dose and he passed away. So it was, you know, meaningful that I

00:36:14.510 - 00:36:30.780

got to talk to him and and ask a lot of questions during my training, I now have so many more questions I would love to ask him, but unfortunately can't do that. But I feel like I'm there continuing to tell his story. He would have been

00:36:31.110 - 00:36:53.180

100 years old, this past april and it's neat to still tell his story to visitors of the museum. Yeah. Um, over the past couple of years that related to the question before about running a congregation during covid, what was working at the holocaust museum? Well, one

00:36:53.180 - 00:37:10.540

of the things that we did, we started have having virtual programs and uh, and they put together a tour of the museum Where the dose, so there would be a video for about 10 minutes and then the docent would speak for a few minutes and it

00:37:10.540 - 00:37:29.950

was kind of broken up in different pieces and it was fairly successful. We had schools from all over participate and it was an hour program because that's typically what what students have as far as time periods in a class. And it really turned out to be

00:37:29.950 - 00:37:48.430

a successful venture for the museum where we were able to continue giving tours even though they were not in person. The other thing that we started during the pandemic is we really started recruiting Children and grandchildren of survivors to try to tell their stories of their

00:37:48.430 - 00:38:10.450

families, holocaust history because right now we have only, we, as I said before, we had about 1000 holocaust survivors settled in Houston, but we now have probably just Under 90 that are still with us. And of those 90, maybe four or five even speak publicly. We

00:38:10.450 - 00:38:29.570

have very few that are really able to speak. So what we're trying to do is get Children of survivors. And so during the pandemic that was one of my projects is to put together a power point presentation, which you can find online. The museum's YouTube station.

00:38:29.800 - 00:38:49.820

And it was, and I've given it to a number of schools just speaking about virtual programming, eye contact. Right before the pandemic, my wife and I were going on a trip with the museum to Lithuania and Poland and it got canceled. Obviously it was like in

00:38:49.820 - 00:39:09.680

april uh, and the month after everything kind of crashed. But I had made contacts with people in Poland and especially a woman in the little town my father was from who became a holocaust educator. She got interested in college and it's like the historian for that

00:39:09.680 - 00:39:27.190

little village and knows so much about what happened in Valka viscous. So I told her if you have any friends that are teachers and would like a virtual program. And sure enough, she contacted some of her teachers and I did a virtual program for students in

00:39:27.190 - 00:39:46.170

Valka viscous in the town that my father was from and told them the story of my father living there growing up there and and the suffering that they did and the loss of his family members in this town and they really connected to it. And even

00:39:46.170 - 00:40:05.150

the teacher posted something on facebook that was just amazing and just beautiful what she wrote and how meaningful the experience was for me speaking to the students, the bad part about it is I had to start at six a.m. Because their class, their last class of

00:40:05.150 - 00:40:22.930

the day was two p.m. Time difference. I had to get up very, very early to present it. But I was awake enough but I think I came across okay. But that was something that we did at the museum with these programs. Yeah, that's fascinating. You know,

00:40:22.940 - 00:40:39.820

perhaps the silver lining of covid is the kind of international and you know, interregional connections you get to make within the jewish community to talk with people across all these boundaries we never thought we'd be able to cross. Yeah. Um, to kind of wrap up things

00:40:39.820 - 00:40:56.560

here. Uh tell me a little bit about your passion for magic and how you, yeah, I became a magician when I was seven years old. My grandmother was living in New York before she moved in with us to Houston in our home when I was 11,

00:40:56.570 - 00:41:10.600

she lived in New York still after my mother got married and she would send me little magic tricks in the mail. And so by, I don't know, fourth or fifth grade, I was doing magic shows for my brothers. Friends even had a birthday party I performed

00:41:10.600 - 00:41:29.990

at and just, it was just a fun fun hobby and in college I got more involved with it. I was a camp counselor at a summer camp called Echo fill ranch predominantly catered to the jewish communities of texas, mainly Houston and Dallas in Austin and san

00:41:29.990 - 00:41:50.840

Antonio I guess also. But but it was a wonderful camp run by men and tom Friedman. Uh their Children kinky Friedman you may have heard of, became a country western singer and an author and ran for governor and he was one of the counselors at camp

00:41:51.040 - 00:42:09.750

and and his brother Roger and little sister Marcy were also there and I really got into magic more at camp. That's where my magic name was even invented by, by one of the campers there. He said your name is high, so you should be called Hi

00:42:09.750 - 00:42:33.860

Deanie. So I became the great hi Deanie as my stage name and I went on to do it when I grew up I guess in my thirties I was going around doing public performances just for nonprofit groups, predominantly all over town now, uh presenting for jewish

00:42:33.860 - 00:42:56.920

family service for the adult of Iraq. Ah I was at a jewish summer camp last friday at Congregation Beth shalom of the Woodlands doing a magic show and teaching magic. And I'm actually going back to Echo Hill this summer for their camp to teach magic and

00:42:56.920 - 00:43:16.740

perform for the camp that they have there now they now have a camp for Children of gold star families. So everybody that's there, lost their, lost a parent in the military and they're also going to be having Children of families were a first responder was killed

00:43:16.740 - 00:43:32.280

in the line of the Line of duty. So it's very neat thing and looking forward to going there in a couple of weeks. But it's a fun hobby. I'm involved with the local chapters of the international brotherhood of magicians and the Society of american magicians. I'm

00:43:32.280 - 00:43:50.600

hoping if I can convince my wife to go to Fort Worth in a couple of months for the texas Association of Magicians Annual Convention. So it's a fun hobby and you get to meet all kinds of people and it's interesting. So many Jewish magicians have come

00:43:50.600 - 00:44:12.390

out over the year. I think they had a list once in Magic magazine of 100 top magicians and 20% of that list were Jews starting with, you know, Harry, Houdini and Eric Vice and David Copperfield, whose real name is David Kotkin. Hmm, that's interesting. I would

00:44:12.390 - 00:44:27.520

have never thought that there would have been this, you know, huge amount of juice and magic, but you learn something new every day. So yeah, um, it was really great talking to you. This is such a great opportunity. And um, yeah, this was a great interview.

00:44:27.520 - 00:44:28.840

So thank you so much