J. Kent "Kenny" Friedman Oral History Interview and Transcript
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Houston Jewish History Archive at Rice University Interviewee: J. Kent "Kenny" Friedman Interviewer: Dr. Joshua Furman Date: December 28, 2020 J. Kent Friedman has recently retired as the General Counsel and Chief Administrative Officer of Morae Legal Corporation, an international legal consulting firm. He grew up in Biloxi, Mississippi, and received a B.B.A and a LL.B. degree from Tulane, as well as a LL.M. degree in Taxation from Boston University. Kenny has served as president of the Mickey Leland Kibbutzim Internship Foundation, president of the Southwest Region of the American Jewish Committee, and chairman of the Community Relations Council of the Jewish Federation of Greater Houston, among many other positions in Jewish communal and Houston lay leadership. He has received numerous awards and honors, including the Leon Jaworski Award from the Houston Bar Association Auxiliary and the Max Nathan Award from the American Jewish Committee. He is married to Dr. Ann Friedman, and has five children and eight grandchildren. In this interview, Kenny speaks of his childhood and family history, and the role Judaism had in each. He discusses his secondary education and career, exploring how his Jewish identity adapted to and influenced his development as a lawyer and prominent community leader. Kenny speaks of his move to Houston and his involvement with the city’s political and social organizations, especially the Harris County - Houston Sports Authority. He discusses his son Andrew Friedman’s distinguished career in baseball, including stints as the general manager of the Tampa Bay Rays and Los Angeles Dodgers, and describes what it was like to have competing rooting interests during the now-controversial 2017 World Series between the Houston Astros and the Los Angeles Dodgers. He addresses the Covid-19 pandemic and its influence on his personal life. Throughout, Kenny shares insightful anecdotes from his long and distinguished career of legal work and community service. Transcript Review by HJHA Intern Sam Raphaelson INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT FURMAN: Hello. My name is Joshua Furman. I'm the curator of the Houston Jewish History Archive at Rice University. Today is December 28, 2020, and I'm here with J. Kent Friedman. Kenny, how are you? FRIEDMAN: I'm well, Josh, thanks. How 'bout you? FURMAN: I'm doing great. Thanks for taking the time to be with us, to talk about your childhood and family history, and, your career, and all that you've done here in Houston in the community. So tell us a little bit about your childhood and where you grew up. FRIEDMAN: Well, I grew up in Biloxi, Mississippi, an unusual place for a Jewish boy to grow up. My dad was in the service, and when he was shipped overseas, my mother went to live with her sister and her sister's husband who lived in Biloxi, Mississippi. They had a ladies' ready-to-wear store there, and she stayed there until my dad got out of the service. And when he did at the end of World War II, he came back there and started his own clothing store, a men's clothing store, in in Biloxi. FURMAN: Mm hmm. FRIEDMAN: So that's where I grew up. FURMAN: And when were you born, Kenny? FRIEDMAN: 1944. February 12, 1944. FURMAN: 1944. Okay. So, I mean, give us like, a sense of what it was like to grow up in, you know, a small town in the South as a Jewish kid. What was that like? FRIEDMAN: You know, it was a great experience for me. Biloxi is on the Gulf Coast and, it is predominantly Catholic and has no real agricultural history like most of the South, and so, we didn't have any slave trade there, or that kind of thing, and so, it was, you know, it was pretty easy. Frankly there were so few Jews in town that we were kinda like the Greek family in town, right? I mean, we're just not a threat to anybody. But there were just a handful of Jewish families. FURMAN: Mm hmm. And then what about, antisemitism or, or pressure to convert. Did anybody ever, you know, talk to you and say things like, you know, "Christ-killer," or things like that? FRIEDMAN: No. No, I never heard any of that. I never heard any of that. I had some close friends, some boys who lived across the street from me, who were Catholic, who were very concerned about me going to hell if I hadn't been baptized, and so they quietly baptized me one day in their home. But other than, that's as close as I ever came to any kind of overt discrimination of any kind. And they were doing it for the right – for what at least in their hearts – for the right reasons. FURMAN: Did they explain what they were doing? I mean, did they dunk your head in a bathtub? What happened? FRIEDMAN: They sprinkled holy water on my head. Their mother has a great story about, you know, being quiet in the house and her realizing that was unusual, and sneaking up the stairs just as they were sprinkling holy water on my head and baptized me. I was about seven or eight, and – FURMAN: [inaudible] FRIEDMAN: – for several months I thought I was Catholic. I wouldn't eat meat on Fridays and things like that, and to my parents' everlasting credit, they just went with the flow of that. And, after a few months I, you know, kind of reverted to normal. FURMAN: Huh. Okay. And then tell us a little bit more about the Jewish community there. Was there a rabbi? Was there a synagogue? How did it work? FRIEDMAN: No. When I was growing up, there was not a rabbi there. We always brought in a rabbi, from New Orleans or Mobile, both of which were fairly close for the High Holy Days. I was fortunate, and when I was about to be thirteen there was a Jewish chaplain on the Air Force base, Keesler Air Force Base there, and so he did my Bar Mitzvah. Most people believe that I was the first person ever Bar Mitzvah'd in Biloxi, Mississippi, because of that. But, it was such a long time ago that my Catholic friends across the street had to get permission from the Church to attend the Bar Mitzvah, because that was at a time when the Catholic Church would not allow their parishioners to attend other services – not Jewish; any other services of any kind. FURMAN: Wow. Wow, incredible. What about, like, Rosh Hashanah, Passover? Do you have, you know, memories of how the holidays were observed in Biloxi growing up? FRIEDMAN: Yes, I have wonderful memories of that. My parents were very open and sharing, and we always had extra people at our home for those special holidays. Usually servicemen who were stationed at the Air Force base and were away from home, of course, and so we always had a number of them over for those kinds of holidays. FURMAN: Mm hmm. FRIEDMAN: Wonderful time. FURMAN: Yeah. FRIEDMAN: Wonderful time. FURMAN: Tell me more about your parents. We haven't said much about them today. What were their names? How did they meet? FRIEDMAN: My mother's name was Rose Frohlich, F-R-O-H-L-I-C-H. She was born in New York but grew up in Montgomery, Alabama, which is where her family ended up. FURMAN: Mm hmm. FRIEDMAN: My father's name was Earl Friedman, and he grew up in Port Arthur, Texas, which is where his family ended up. They met when my mother was working for a chain millinery store, hats and things, and was sent to Port Arthur, Texas to run their store there. FURMAN: Hmm. FRIEDMAN: – so they married 1941, and I was born in '44. FURMAN: Born in '44. And then the store that your family had. Tell me a bit about the store. What did you guys sell? Did you grow up working in the store? FRIEDMAN: Grew up working in the store. It was called Kent's, named after me. K-E-N-T- apostrophe-S. And, I did grow up working in the store. I enjoyed being in the store. Both my parents worked in the store. And, you know, it was just part of the family. FURMAN: Mm hmm. – FRIEDMAN: And then I had a younger sister who was four years younger, who is four years younger than I am. She stayed in Mississippi. She and her husband now live in Jackson, Mississippi. But it's the only, really family left in Mississippi for me. FURMAN: Mm hmm. What about, you know, growing up in the South in the era of Jim Crow? I mean, can you talk about life, you know, as a Jewish kid in a segregated town, what that was like? What do you, what do you remember about that time? FRIEDMAN: Well, it was clearly very segregated. And schools were segregated. And, I was a beneficiary of that segregation because I played a lot of sports, and probably wouldn't have had an opportunity to play as much sports if the teams had been integrated. But, you know, it was very segregated. And, although there was always a lot of interaction between the African American community and the Anglo community. I never saw much in the way of animosity towards African American people; just that they were considered to be different and separate and apart. And, and that was clearly a very strongly ingrained feeling, in Mississippi, and I remember my dad once talking about how terrible it was that we asked people of color to serve in the armed services and to put their life on the line for the country, and then when they came home, they didn't have an opportunity to do things that everybody else had the opportunity to do.