Bob Melvin

Bob Melvin and his late wife Mary opened their fund at The Dallas Foundation in 2000. A native of Connecticut, Mr. Melvin moved to Dallas in the early 1950s and found a job at the Mercantile Bank. A few years later, he began working as an accountant at Vought Aircraft and wound up staying there for the rest of his career. Mrs. Melvin, whose family had roots in East Texas, taught school in Highland Park.

The following excerpts are from our interview with Mr. Melvin:

Q: Where are you from, and when did you arrive in Dallas?

MELVIN: I grew up in Connecticut, near New York City. I came to Dallas in ’52, more or less as a stranger. I had one college friend, Cullum Thompson — he’s part of the Cullum crowd — from Dallas. I was in a four-year program at Wharton (School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania). He came as a junior, and I was a freshman. When I decided that I was not going to struggle with living and working in New York anymore, I wrote him a letter. He said, yes, he’d be my reference. So I decided I was going to try this Texas thing. I got to town, and the first couple of nights, I checked into the Adolphus Hotel. Then I thought I better get something cheaper. I lived at the YMCA.

A man who lived here for a while as a newlywed husband told me I couldn’t live in the South without having a church affiliation. I wound up driving around Highland Park, and I saw the big Highland Park Presbyterian. Once I got baptized, and used to being in church all the time, I went back to my childhood (denomination) and switched over to St. Michael and All Angels Episcopal Church. I’ve been there for about 50 years.

Q: What tasks have you taken on there?

MELVIN: I help with communion service, taking communion to people who are shut-ins. Now that I’m retired, I go every day.

Q: How did you and your wife Mary meet?

MELVIN: There were singles groups at Highland Park Methodist and Highland Park Presbyterian, and I got into that. It is still the core of my social (group), those people I met back in the early ’50s. A guy in the group was organizing a prewedding party for a couple. He said, “why don’t you bring your date and come?” I called him back and said, “Well, she turned me down, but I can come.” He said, “let me get you a date.” I said, “Who have you got in mind?” And he said, “Mary Lila Hooton.”

We went to Sokol Hall, it was a Czech recreation center, it was just dancing and it was bring your own bottle. She was working for the Methodist church. She took a highball, and we were both smoking cigarettes. My mother was raised a Methodist, and she had all these things about Methodist blue laws. I didn’t think I wanted to get involved with a Methodist, but I was just so intrigued with Mary. We sat at one end of the table, and I was just oblivious to everybody else.

It was mid-July, and we sat out in front of her duplex and talked until 4:00 in the morning. I asked her for a date for the next Saturday night and her answer was, “Well, do we have to wait that long?” So I said, “OK, I’ll take you to church.”

We got engaged six weeks later, on Labor Day, and married the Saturday before Christmas in 1963.

Q: So you were married 40 years?

MELVIN: She died in 2002, short of our 39th anniversary. I went to La Boheme yesterday, and for the first time in my experience, that end scene got to me, and I cried. Part of it was just reliving losing my wife.

Q: When did you come to The Dallas Foundation?

MELVIN: I had some highly appreciated stock. The St. Michael’s Foundation would only take donations for the parish; they wouldn’t even take donations for the benefit of things like Shelter Ministries, which was really an Episcopal cause. I knew George Jalonick, The Dallas Foundation President Mary Jalonick’s late husband, and that’s how it came about.

Q: What are some of the causes you support?

MELVIN: St. Michael and All Angels. This year, I gave them some money for their building fund. Also, the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, Shelter Ministries, St. Phillip’s (School and Community Center), and the Dallas Opera.

Ellen Karelsen Solender

Ellen Karelsen Solender and her late husband, Robert Solender, became Dallas Foundation donors in 2000. They had met in college and married in New York City, then moved to Dallas in the late 1940s. Mr. Solender became an executive with the Dallas Times Herald.

Mrs. Solender became a self-described “Fifties mother” of two daughters and a son, and an active volunteer. When their youngest child was in elementary school, Mrs. Solender returned to school and earned a law degree. She spent more than two decades as a law professor at Southern Methodist University before moving to emerita status. Bob Solender died in November 2008 after a brief struggle with leukemia. The Solenders shared a devotion to liberal causes and a fierce intelligence tempered with humor and compassion. Mrs. Solender, 85, plans to continue the couple’s philanthropic legacy.

The following excerpts are from our interview with Mrs. Solender:

Q: Where were you born?

SOLENDER: I’m a third-generation native New Yorker. I grew up in Manhattan.

Q: When and why did you leave New York?

SOLENDER: I went to Oberlin College, and my husband, the late Robert Solender, went to Oberlin. Bob graduated in 1943; I graduated in 1944. We were not dating because he went overseas for the war.

Q: What service was he in?

SOLENDER: The Navy. He was captain of a landing craft. I went to work for Bell Labs, as a technical assistant in physical testing in switches and relays. Later, after the war, I was thinking about what I was going to do next, so I went to the Stevens Institute of Technology (in New Jersey) and took a test, and you know what they said? “You’re the too-many-aptitude woman, and we can’t help you.” Every time I think about that, I wonder, why didn’t I ask, “What you would tell a man?” But it was 1947, so I didn’t. What else could you do? You went to secretary school.

Then Bob came back from the war. Most people don’t realize that my class, like others of the late 1930s and early 1940s, bore the brunt of the war. There were a great many men who were killed. So whenever I heard that somebody had come back, I would call them and ask them if they’d seen anyone from our class. So I called Bob — I’d heard he’d been in the South Pacific. He said, “Why don’t we go somewhere and have a drink?” The rest is history.

We dated for a couple of years in New York City. When we were thinking about our future, I asked him, “Can you earn enough money that when we have children, we can send them to private school and live in Manhattan?” He said, “No.”

We decided to leave the city. Our ambition was to own a newspaper. We came down here and Bob got hired by the Dallas Times Herald. Basically, we achieved our ambition because he became an executive and owned a lot of stock.

Q: What was Dallas like when you got here? Did you feel welcome?

SOLENDER: When we got here, Bob was working, and I was looking for work. I rode every bus to the end of the line to see what was there.

We had long lists of people to look up. There was the League of Women Voters and the Unitarian Church. And there was Neiman Marcus. Stanley Marcus became a friend. Our first Christmas, Stanley met Bob in the elevator when Bob was buying me a present. Stanley asked Bob what he was doing on Christmas. And Stanley invited us to come have breakfast at their house. Bob, said, “sure.” We thought this must be a Dallas custom — that you have brunch with the Marcuses on Christmas. Then, we got there, and there were no other automobiles. It was just a very private, nice breakfast.

Early on, I worked for The Wall Street Journal as a secretary. I never felt that I was a good secretary. After that, I was a 1950s mother, very active in the League of Women Voters. We had three children Eliza, Tom, and Katie.

Q: When and why did you become a lawyer?

SOLENDER: I did volunteer work, and the Council of Social Agencies asked me to do an update on the (Dallas County) Juvenile Department. So I took my little questionnaire and went out there to interview the head of the juvenile department. And I strongly believe he lied to me. He lied about anything you could think of in connection with taking proper care of juveniles.

Like an idiot, I said to myself, I don’t like being lied to, and I don’t like being patted on the head as a North Dallas “do-gooder.” I decided I would get credentials. I went to law school at SMU. I graduated in 1973. We started with 12 women, the largest class of women they’d ever had, but it dropped precipitously.

After graduating from law school, I was working at home and preparing for the bar exam, when I got a phone call asking me to become a legal writing instructor at the law school. One of the jobs I was interested in was to be a prosecutor for (Dallas County District Attorney) Henry Wade in the juvenile section, because you could learn a lot, and then you could help children. He didn’t hire me.

So I continued on at the law school, and the next thing you know, there was a little pressure about affirmative action. The top woman in the class of 1977– the top person in the class – couldn’t get a job at a law firm. (She’s now a federal judge.) There was a big lawsuit, and all of a sudden, law firms began hiring women. The law school hired me as a torts, family law, and First Amendment professor.

When I got to be 70, I decided to retire. You don’t have to retire when you’re tenured, but I felt I was blocking people from moving up.

Teaching family law, I got very interested in domestic violence. I’ve been a member of the City of Dallas Domestic Violence Task Force since 1987, when it was started.

Q: What did your friends, or your kids say, when you decided to go back to school?

SOLENDER: Nobody said anything. A relatively large number of my friends in the League of Women Voters went back to school and went to work. One of the reasons we did that was sending your kids to college costs money. It wasn’t that “empty nest syndrome.” In fact, to this day, Katie gets so angry when people say I went back to school because of the empty nest. She was in grade school. I had one in grade school, one in junior high, and one in high school. It was really the wrong time for me to go to school.

Q: How did you end up involved in civic affairs?

SOLENDER: Bob was active. He was president of Hope Cottage and the Mental Health Association (now Mental Health America) as well as a board member for the ChildCareGroup and Child Guidance Center.

Q: Why was it important to be involved?

SOLENDER: I was raised as an Ethical Culturist in New York. My grandfather was one of the founders of the movement, and so I went to a private school of Ethical Culture. Basically, Ethical Culturists tell you to be ethical. Period. It really has nothing to do with the Lord. Unitarians are far more religious than Ethical Culturists. When we got married in the Ethical Culture service, (smiling) we had a lecture on democracy. Democracy with a small “d.” My family, being Ethical Culturists, believed you had an obligation to be involved in civic life.

(Editor’s note: The Ethical Culture movement began in the 1850s and encouraged an ethical, but nonreligious, approach to other humans, the natural world, and the future. One pioneer of the movement summarized the philosophy this way: “Act so as to elicit the best in others and thereby in thyself.”)

My husband was the only member of his family – his immediate family – who was not a social worker. His father, his brother, his sister, and his mother were all social workers. He had to be involved.

Q: How did you connect with The Dallas Foundation?

SOLENDER: My husband knew the history. And I had some stock that had belonged to me at the time of our marriage. So you can imagine what happened to it; it significantly appreciated, but paid no dividends. We couldn’t figure out what to do with it -- there was no way we could figure out its basis, so we decided to give it to The Dallas Foundation.

Q: Are there certain causes or organizations you’ve supported and will continue to support?

SOLENDER: Domestic violence prevention, the North Texas Food Bank, Oberlin College, the Southwestern Medical Foundation, and the League of Women Voters.

Q: Why did you decide to name The Foundation in your wills?

SOLENDER: This is very important, and I’m telling people this. In your will, you should write that whatever amount you want to give away should go to The Dallas Foundation, and then later you can specify exactly what you want done with it. You have great flexibility. I’ve also said, if I haven’t specified sufficiently, my children can decide for me. I don’t have to rewrite my will. All I have to do is write a letter. In our wills, we have allocated 10 percent to charity.

Carl J. “Tommy” Thomsen, 92, is both a former governorof The Dallas Foundation and its first donor-advisor. He came to Dallas shortly after World War II, to start his career at a rapidly growing firm that later became Texas Instruments. He rose in management as the company grew and eventually served on TI’s Board of Directors for 30 years.

Mr. Thomsen credits TI’s founders with teaching him about the importance of philanthropy. He credits an engineer there with introducing him to his first wife, Hortense “Cissy” McClure, who died in 1996. He’s an avid fly fisherman and loves dancing, two interests he shares with his second wife, the former Lois Bacon.

His philanthropic interests are wide-ranging. He and his first wife gave generously to Genesis Women’s Shelter and established an endowed chair for Alzheimer’s Disease Research at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. They also established the Thomsen Foundation, a 600-acre restored prairie north of Decatur that serves as a field laboratory for science teachers and rural school students. He established trusts at his junior college and college alma mater.

The following excerpts are from our interview with Mr. Thomsen:

Q: Where did you grow up, and what sort of business was your family in?

THOMSEN: My grandfather was an artist, and he came to this country from an area right on the border of Denmark and Germany. Both my mother’s family and my father’s family came from that same general area. My grandfather started an interior decorating business for apartment buildings, public buildings, and churches; he did sketches of interior features and showed people how it would look. My father carried on the business, and for whatever business reason he may have had, he sold it in October 1929 (before the stock market crash).

I was born in Wisconsin, and lived in Fond du Lac, Manitowoc and Appleton. I went to a military academy for junior college. It’s now called St. John’s Northwestern Military Academy. Then I went to Rensselaer (Polytechnic Institute) in Troy, NY, for a degree in industrial engineering. My father died when I was 16, so my mother was the guidance to my educational effort. I’ll always appreciate that she did not dictate to me what I should do. I know she would have preferred that I’d gone to the University of Wisconsin, which my cousins did. But the choices I made were mine.

After Rensselaer, I went to a consulting engineering firm, then to Westinghouse in their radio and X-ray division. I went into the Navy in 1943 and came out in 1946. I wanted to get into naval aviation. When they gave me the first eye test, they said I would be considered for desk service but not sea duty.

I was in the bureau of aeronautic productions division because they thought I knew something about manufacturing. Instead of going to any of the Navy schools, I left Baltimore and went to Washington. When I first wore the uniform, I bought a train ticket to Washington. I said, “I ought to pay more.” The salesperson said, “Sir, you’re in uniform.” I guess servicemen got special prices.

Q: How did you end up in Texas?

THOMSEN: One of my senior officers in the Navy was Pat Haggerty, and he introduced me to Erik Jonsson, one of the founders of Texas Instruments. Erik represented Geophysical Services Inc. (GSI) to the Navy Department, and Erik invited Pat to come down and manage what was then the laboratory and manufacturing division. And Pat had a family, and he got out of the Navy earlier than I did. Pat asked if I’d like to go to Dallas. I accepted Pat’s invitation to come down and look rather than return to Westinghouse.

I took the logical approach that an industrial engineer would follow. I toured the GSI plant, which was part of a garage on Harwood Street, met three or four people who were native Dallasites, and I liked them. Pat Haggerty invited me out to his house for dinner, and I knew his wife, Bea, was a very good cook. Bea prepared a schaum torte, a very delicious dessert. I had one piece of that dessert and decided I’d stay in Dallas.

My background was almost all in finance. I came as controller of the laboratory and manufacturing division.

Q: What was Texas Instruments like at that time?

THOMSEN: The company was Geophysical Services, Inc. (GSI) then. And, as well as I can recall, it had been a subsidiary searching for oil for major oil companies and for its holding company. The major oil companies weren’t too happy with that. So J. Erik Jonsson, Cecil H. Greene, Eugene McDermott, and Herb Peacock bought the search subsidiary in 1941 calling it Geophysical Services, Inc. Toward the end of World War II, this company began development and production of electronic equipment, including a magnetic airborne detection device for the Navy.

All of us were learning about how a larger company ran. GSI became Texas Instruments, and a few years later, I went on the board. Erik was looking ahead to developing managers, so he became very interested in the American Management Association (AMA) based in New York. Each one of us went to a series of their sessions, and I had the opportunity to attend the financial section. As managers came along, we sent them to classes at AMA.

It was a lot of fun. Even my secretary, who’s been with me for over 30 years, said that TI was more than just a business. My first wife said, “That’s not a business, that’s a religion.” There was just always something to do, and we always did it. We’d get home at 7:30 p.m., 8 p.m. Our wives, I’m sure, didn’t appreciate it, but they also recognized we were having a lot of fun.

Q: Texas Instruments has long supported educational causes. How did that come about?

THOMSEN: I regret there has not been a history written of the lives and philanthropy of Gene McDermott, Cecil Greene, and Erik Jonsson. Each of them gave generously as individuals and collectively in support of education, the arts, and medicine. For example, together they provided the initial funds for the Institution which later became the University of Texas at Dallas (UTD). Gene McDermott established funding for many students at MIT. Cecil Greene funded a science building at MIT and contributed to 11 universities around the world. Erik gave generously to the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Skidmore College in New York, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York, and The Hockaday School in Dallas and he established The Lamplighter School in Dallas.

All three of those men thought about philanthropy. They not only thought about it, they acted on it. The next generation, of which I was a part, tried to do what we could. I’m very pleased to see that the generation that followed is doing the same thing. That tradition has been carried through at TI, and I think that’s what I’m most proud of.

Q: When did you start giving personally?

THOMSEN: Oh, probably in the 1950s. I’ve often thought that if I had not given as I did then, I’d have that much more to give later. But that’s true also of the three leaders that I mentioned.

Q: You opened the first donor advised fund at The Dallas Foundation. How did that happen?

I was asked to serve on the Board of Governors of The Dallas Foundation. I was honored to do it. At that time, I was also on the Board of the Excellence in Education Foundation (EEF) and I remember an occasion where EEF wished to delay a planned contribution to the predecessor of UTD and made a contribution to The Dallas Foundation.

Q: What do you find are the most effective ways to encourage philanthropy?

THOMSEN: I think learning from an example is one way. And seeing what philanthropic funds can do. My first wife and I were interested in Genesis Women’s Shelter. The director out there was so enthusiastic. She told us that the problem of mistreatment of wives was almost a cycle, and that if the father mistreated his wife, the son would think that was acceptable and grow up after his father. We wanted to do anything we could to help that program.

Linus D. Wright                                                                 

Former Dallas Foundation Governor Linus Wright never ducks a challenge. At the age of 81, he accepted the difficult task of leading the state Teacher Retirement System during the deepest economic downturn in decades. But he’s tackled tough assignments before. At 17, the native Texan enlisted in the U.S. Army and was deployed to Okinawa in the closing weeks of World War II.

He served as the superintendent of the Dallas Independent School District from 1978-1987. In that position, he juggled issues including court-ordered desegregation, contracting scandals, financial shortfalls and low academic achievement. He served on the Dallas Foundation’s Board of Governors from 1990 to 1999.

The following excerpts are from our interview with Mr. Wright:

Q: Where did you grow up?

WRIGHT: I was born on a farm in Fannin County, but moved to Denison while in the first grade and finished high school there.

Q: Did you go to college right after high school?

WRIGHT: After one semester at North Texas Agricultural College in Arlington, I enlisted in the U.S. Army as a 17-year-old kid. I was on my way overseas to Okinawa when the war ended and we proceeded to Japan for two years of occupation duty. While there, I took paratrooper training and became a proud member of the 11th Airborne. Actually, I jumped out of the first airplane I went up in! Upon returning to the United States, I remained in the Reserves, not as an idealist, but because I needed the money. I retired in 1969 as a lieutenant colonel, having spent every “vacation” for 20 years at Fort Hood. My military experience was, without a doubt, the best training I ever had in terms of leadership, organization, planning, and management.

Q: How did you wind up in education?

WRIGHT: As a kid, I worked at a drugstore — as a bicycle delivery boy, a soda jerk, a clerk — and the manager gave me responsibilities and whetted my interest in business. It just seemed natural to go to Austin College; it was close, I could attend on the GI Bill, and they had an outstanding business program. Armed with a degree in economics, I was offered a job in the Sears management training program. However, I graduated in August, and the Sears program didn’t start until January. Denison offered me a temporary job as a coach and teacher, and I needed a job. Then, in one of those turns in the road of which our lives are made, the superintendent said, “Linus, you should be a teacher, and if you’ll stay, we’ll pay for your master’s in education.” Well, obviously, I stayed.

Q: Where did you meet your wife?

WRIGHT: Joyce and I are a melded family. My first wife Peggy passed away in 1978 at age 47 of cancer. We had two children. Then I came to Dallas as superintendent, met a girl I had known since fourth grade, and it was love at first sight. I’ve had 30 years of wonderful marriage twice!
Q: What were the major issues facing the Dallas Independent School District and the city when you became superintendent in 1978?

WRIGHT: Desegregation. As a result of that, we had a number of schools that lost enrollment. The school district had reached the maximum tax limit. Teachers had not had a raise in two years. We had to figure out how to get more money to give them a raise, how to close small neighborhood schools that parents didn’t want to close, and go through the struggles on busing. I ran into a problem with employees who were taking kickbacks from contractors and sent eight people to prison.

Q: What were your proudest accomplishments at DISD?

WRIGHT: When I came to the district in 1978, it was the lowest-achieving urban school district in Texas. When I left, it was the highest-achieving school district. It became one of the highest-achieving school districts in the country at that time. When I came in, it was broke. It had a zero fund balance. When I left, it had a $50 million fund balance.

Q: How have teachers changed over the years?

WRIGHT: I have great respect for those who choose to teach in today’s school environments. Colleges of education are struggling to prepare teacher candidates for what they will face, both from a bureaucratic, hard-to-manipulate administration and from a student body, many of whom neither want to learn nor even to be there. Motivating students who range from these to the truly gifted and talented who can operate far above grade level is the challenge of today’s teacher.

Q: You were appointed to be the undersecretary of the U.S. Department of Education in 1987. What was it like to work in Washington?

WRIGHT: My two years with the Reagan administration, working with Congress and the president, was indeed a career highlight. It gave me the opportunity to look at the bigger picture — at 15,000 school districts, not just one — and how it all fit with higher education. It was an extraordinary experience, and Joyce and I enjoyed every minute of it.

Q: Why did you come back to Dallas?

WRIGHT: We kept our home here in Dallas, intending to return at the end of President Reagan’s second term, and when a Dallas-Fort Worth executive search firm offered me a position, I accepted. Then an education software company in Irving offered me its presidency to get the company ready to sell. Sell we did, and I returned to the executive search field.

Q: Why was it important to remain so involved in community affairs?

WRIGHT: When I first started out in education in Denison and Sherman, I became a Boy Scout leader. Then the Chamber of Commerce got me involved, and the Red Cross. Also, I have participated in church activities all of my adult life. (Incidentally, my first teaching contract in Denison included a pledge that I would teach Sunday school and would not smoke or drink!)
In other words, whenever I was asked to serve, if I thought I could handle it, I did. It may sound “corny,” but I have always felt both an obligation and a pleasure in “making things happen” in service.

Q: How did you get involved with The Dallas Foundation?

WRIGHT: John Scovell asked me to serve on the board. The Foundation was much smaller then. Mary Jalonick had not been director for too many years. It was gratifying to work with others on improving things in Dallas through nonprofit organizations.

As I see it, philanthropy places the responsibility at the local level. People have sensitivity to needs and are willing to share. A community that has that kind of involvement is a better community than one that depends on the state and federal governments for everything.

Q: How is being in your 80s any different from being in your 70s?

WRIGHT: I’m retired full-time, though I do serve on a number of nonprofit boards. However, I can dictate my own calendar and schedule. I still find it very gratifying to work with people and I hope that I make a contribution.

Q: Any advice for people who are not yet retired?

WRIGHT: Nothing profound: Stay active physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. Never stop learning. Be involved with people — socially and politically — and serve wherever your talents lead you.