Carla Donen Davis talks about growing up in Columbia, South Carolina, where she was born in 1937 to Helen Cohen and Mordecai Moses Donen. She has one sibling, brother Stanley Donen, who left home at age sixteen to dance on Broadway in New York. Stanley went on to become a successful Hollywood director. Carla touches on her family history; her mother's family, the Cohens, originated in Germany; her father's family had roots in Russia. She grew up in the Shandon neighborhood of the capital city and notes that she never experienced or witnessed antisemitism. The Cohens were active members of and officers in Tree of Life, the Reform temple, as were the Donens, including Carla, who served as Sisterhood president. The interviewee observes that Reform practices have "moved slightly toward Conservative, and the Conservative . . . slightly toward Orthodox." Carla was married to Larry Goldstein from 1956 to 1969; they raised three sons, Miles, Donen, and Mark, in Columbia. She married Dan Davis in 1972 and, four years later, gave birth to her fourth son, Daniel.
Betty Lindau Ustun revisits some of the stories she told about her parents in her 2013 interviews (Mss. 1035-378) and describes how her family celebrated Passover in Columbia, South Carolina. She discusses her “concept of God;” the founding of Temple Micah in Washington, D.C., where she was a founding member; and her involvement in establishing a Washington-Moscow art exchange in the late 1980s. The transcript includes comments inserted by the interviewee during proofreading. See Mss. 1035-378 for interviews conducted in 2013.
