Chapter 6

 A Tale of Two Cemeteries 

Life is a journey . . . and death a destination.-Rabbi Alvin Fein, Gates of  Repentance

  To everything there is a season. . . . A time to be born and a time to die.-Ecclesiastes 3:1-2

The Beth-El section of Greenwood Memorial Park is a trapezoidal island of grass and granite set apart from the rest of the cemetery by quiet roads and sloping curbs. Magnolia trees, planted in 1947, shade the 1.4-acre graveyard where each corner is anchored by a prominent Temple clan.

            In one corner rest the Gernsbachers, chief among them Henry Gernsbacher (1858-1936), the prime organizer of Beth-El, who is buried beside his wife Julia Falk (1859-1935) and five of their six sons.   

            In another corner lies Max K. Mayer (1877-1955), the first Jewish child born in Fort Worth . He served as Beth-El president when the building on Broadway Street opened and is buried next to his wife, Berenice Gans (1892-1950).

            At the third corner of the cemetery stand the Potishman and Friedman headstones. The original Potishmans were Eastern European immigrants, traditional Jews who were charter members of Congregation Ahavath Sholom. Family patriarch Henry Potishman was an expressman who picked up luggage at the train station in a horse-drawn wagon. His five children rapidly acculturated into the community. One daughter sang in the Temple choir and later gave voice lessons in Hollywood and New York . A son, Leo Potishman (1896-1981), made a fortune in the feed-additive business. He is buried here. His sister, Mamie (1899-1996), Sisterhood president in 1937, married builder Harry B. Friedman (1887-1978). Their son, Fort Worth 's only Jewish mayor, Bayard Friedman (1926-1998), is buried beside them.

            Anchoring the fourth corner of the cemetery is the headstone that marks the final resting place of the Wolf, Klar, and Miller families. Alex Wolf, Jake Klar, and Herman Miller married the Winterman sisters-Fannie, Lena , and Sophia. This close-knit extended family lived the American dream of upward mobility. They began as pawn brokers handling second-hand goods and graduated to the retail trade. Their stores trained a host of aspiring jewelers, including their sons-in-law Ben Ellman and David Gordon and their nephews, the Goldstein brothers, whose storefront became a downtown landmark.

            It was the Wolf, Klar, and Miller families who made it possible for Beth-El to purchase this serene cemetery section in 1929. The property cost $8,000, payable over five years with $2,500 down. Strapped for funds, the Temple raised the down payment from six people who could afford to pay upfront for family plots. The Wolf-Miller-Klar headstone, etched with Jewish stars between each name, represents nearly half the down payment.    

            Meredith Carb, a real estate broker, had first proposed purchasing land at Greenwood in 1923. Operating a cemetery made sense: It was both a service to members and a long-term source of revenue for the congregation.

            Despite Carb's reasoning, trustees delayed purchasing a burial ground, assuming they could obtain at no cost Emanuel Hebrew Rest, the pioneer Jewish cemetery. That acre of land, on South Main Street between St. Joseph Hospital and the city morgue, had belonged to the "Israelites of the city" since 1879, when civic leader John Peter Smith designated it as a Jewish cemetery. A burial society called Emanuel Hebrew Association was formed in 1882 and received the deed. By the turn of the century, the widow Babette Carb was society president. Her executive board met monthly and collected dues from 59 members for maintenance. Congregation Ahavath Sholom purchased its own cemetery on land adjacent to Greenwood Memorial Park in 1909, leaving Hebrew Rest to the Reform Jews.

            By 1918, the cemetery association was making overtures about deeding Hebrew Rest to Beth-El. That year, the Temple minutes state, board President Herman Lederman, whose mother-in-law Tillie Schloss was an active association member, appointed a committee to negotiate with the cemetery "ladies."  Negotiations went nowhere.

            In 1923, an impatient Meredith Carb, whose grandmother Babette was buried at Hebrew Rest two years before, implored the board to look elsewhere.

            He brought two proposals to the table in January 1929. The first, from Rose Hill Burial Park near the Arlington city limits, offered to sell 1,000 burial  plots for $19,000. Carb, a savvy broker, showed the bid to a competitor, William J. Bailey, founder of Greenwood Memorial Park. Bailey remarked that a cemetery operator "should do a little better for a church."  So Carb requested a counteroffer, one that  incorporated both a "church" discount and an additional price break because of  "a favor" Carb had done for Bailey's son. Within a week, Bailey presented the Temple with a deal it could not refuse: 1,800 gravesites at Greenwood Memorial Park for $8,000, payable over 11 years, including "perpetual upkeep."  

            The stock market crash of October 1929 proved just how wise the Greenwood Memorial purchase had been. Despite the Depression, burial plots sold well. They were priced at $150 each for families purchasing one or two plots; $125 per plot for three or four; $100 each for six or more. Non-members paid an additional $50 per plot. Within one year, the cemetery had raised $1,150 for the Temple . At the end of two years, the balance sheet showed $9,100 income. After 20 years, the cemetery had sold 170 lots for a total of $18,200.

            "It is doubtful if anybody now can appreciate what the dead contributed," observed I. E. Horwitz. "The living couldn't provide what was needed, but the dead could and did help."

            Meanwhile, intermittent negotiations continued with the caretakers of Hebrew Rest Cemetery . In 1930, the Emanuel Hebrew Association "entered an agreement" for the Temple to manage the cemetery and discussed hiking the price of gravesites. The agreement was never finalized. In 1933, another committee met with the "ladies in charge of the old Cemetery . . . [suggesting that Beth-El]  take over." Again, an agreement failed to materialize.

            New money was pumped into Hebrew Rest in 1954 upon the death of Dan Levy. Levy, who had previously underwritten the cemetery's wrought iron gates, was buried in a family plot near his father, Beth-El's founding President Sam Levy, and his mother, Addie Kramer Levy.  The son's will established a $10,000 trust to maintain the family graves with the balance for general cemetery care. From the Levy trust, the cemetery association earned interest averaging $370 annually. In addition, the cemetery association's treasury collected around $1,000 in annual dues from members who paid an average of $12 per year. Inflation and an aging, diminishing membership led to a $35 deficit in 1958 and a $300 deficit by 1960.

            The "ladies," represented by Annette Schwarz and Frances Neumegen, were ready to negotiate with Beth-El again.  

            In April 1962, Beth-El Congregation finally signed an agreement to assume the upkeep of Emanuel Hebrew Rest. The pioneer cemetery had more than 300 graves as well as 95 spaces left for sale, according to a cemetery committee report signed by I. E. Horwitz, Manny Rosenthal, and Raymond Cohn. The cemetery association recognized that it could no longer guarantee perpetual care. The Temple felt morally obligated to tend the cemetery. The grounds had become unkempt. During one cleanup effort, congregant Wally Nass recalled hauling away "100 bags of bottles and junk." Under the direction of a succession of cemetery committee chairmen, including Sam Rosen and  Bob Greenman, the pioneer cemetery received due care.

            During the 1970s and 1980s, Hebrew Rest became a favorite project of the Religious School. Religious School Director Ellen Mack guided students as they researched the cemetery's history and studied Jewish burial customs. During Simchat Torah of 1979, students and congregants gathered to bury two Torah scrolls and several prayer books that had been scorched and charred decades before in the Temple fire. A Texas historic marker was dedicated at the cemetery on April 18, 1982 .  

            An oasis of greenery within the city's Hospital District, the Hebrew Rest Cemetery is the site of an annual yiskor memorial service the Sunday morning between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. Local journalists periodically write up the landmark cemetery. During the congregation's annual Mitzvah Day, cemetery maintenance is among the volunteer projects. "It is evident that Emanuel Hebrew Rest holds much of the heritage of the Jewish community of Fort Worth, Texas , inside its gates," wrote a seventh-grader.