The Harness Maker's Dream: Nathan Kallison and the Rise of South Texas

Six: War, Peace, and Prosperity

[S SIX War, Peace, and Prosperity I N 1914 NAT HAN, ANN A, and their fellow Eastern European immigrants learned that the Old World could never be left behind. When Archduke Franz Ferdinand of the AustroHungarian Empire was assassinated on June 28, World War I ignited in Europe. The Kallisons' concerns were about Jewish victims left behind and caught in the crossfire, and the ever-present fear that murderous anti-Semitic scapegoating would follow another royal assassination. The following year, the war came closer to home: a German submarine sank the British ocean liner Lusitania on May 7, 1915, killing 128 American passengers. The United States prepared for war. With the military buildup, the economy of San Antonio boomed. The US Army vastly expanded its presence in the city, with seventy thousand soldiers crowding into Fort Sam Houston and others streaming in for pilot training programs at newly-opened Kelly and Brooks Fields.' Morris was torn: at twenty years old, he was the energetic, ambitious sales manager for his father's store, and he enjoyed a host of friends. But as he served the soldiers who came into Kallison's to buy supplies, he was swept up by their eagerness to get into the war, to serve their country. Anna, however, was terrified. What good did it do to leave European oppression for America, only to send her beloved firstborn back into mortal danger?' After the United States declared war on Germany on April 6, 1917, however, Anna had no say in the matter. Morris Kallison was THE HARNESS MAKER'S DREAM drafted into the United States Army. Assigned to the Fourth Field Artillery at Fort Sam Houston, he quickly rose to the rank of first sergeant . Always driven to work hard to achieve success, Morris took pride that he served in the artillery rather than in the supply corps, a non-combat role at the base. He learned how to handle heavy weapons and to teach others to use them-which bolstered his selfconfidence and ambition. And he learned he could compete successfully with men from all backgrounds and regions of the country, with easterners and westerners, and with men who had the college degrees Morris lacked. He never saw battle in the trenches of Europe, never fired the one hundred fifty-millimeter Howitzers and six-inch mortars of his expertise; he saw "combat" in the fort's mess haiL Assimilated as a teenager into San Antonio's diverse community, Morris was stung by the anti-Semitism he encountered in the army. Seared into his memory was one incident that would shape the way he dealt with bigotry and prejudice for the rest of his life. During a meal that left a bitter taste in his mouth forever, Morris asked a fellow soldier to pass the sugar across the table. The man repeatedly ignored Morris's polite requests, finally responding with a vicious, anti-Semitic epithet. Explosive when his own fuse was lit, Morris invited the soldier to step outside. With the strength and the skills he had honed while boxing as "Kid Morris," Kallison pummeled the bigot.' Years later, Morris told his sons that the mess hall incident strengthened his resolve never to endure prejudice passively, as he had perceived his father had done. On the office wall behind his desk at Kallison's store, Morris had mounted a large stuffed American bald eagle that for him held symbolic importance. "When I was a kid and was sweeping out the store," Morris explained, "I used to see how those establishment folks were mean to my father. One day I saw an eagle up in the sky and I vowed that if I ever got rich, I was going to fly around over those people just like that eagle." The interviewer who quoted him only alluded to the action Morris said "the eagle might take while aloft.'" WAR, PEACE, AND PROSPERITY Forty-three-year-old Nathan Kallison was too old to serve in the military during the war, but he and Anna participated when the small Jewish community of San Antonio quickly organized itself to support the troops, Working with the Jewish Welfare Board, a national federation of local agencies and organizations, volunteers opened centers at Kelly Field in south San Antonio and in the basement of the Gunter office building downtown "for the purpose of providing recreation and entertainment for the soldiers irrespective of creed or...