Early Life and Ancestry
Halaby was born in Dallas, Texas. His father was Najeeb Elias Halaby Sr. a Syrian Christian, who emigrated to the United States from Syria in 1891. Najeeb Elias Halaby Sr.'s father was an Elias Halaby, provincial treasurer or magistrate in Ottoman Syria, who also came to the U.S. in 1891. Najeeb Elias Halaby Sr. worked as an importer and later an oil broker. In the mid-1920s, Najeeb Elias Halaby Sr. opened Halaby Galleries, a rug boutique and interior-decorating shop, at Neiman Marcus in Dallas, and ran it with his wife. He died shortly afterward, and his estate was unable to continue the new enterprise.
Najeeb Elias Halaby Jr.'s mother was the former Laura Wilkins. Following her husband's death, she married Urban B. Koen, but they ultimately divorced. Halaby's maternal grandfather was John T. Wilkins, who served in the 7th Tennessee Cavalry during the Civil War.
Read more about this topic: Najeeb Halaby
Famous quotes containing the words early, life and/or ancestry:
“Everyone in our culture wants to win a prize. Perhaps that is the grand lesson we have taken with us from kindergarten in the age of perversions of Dewey-style education: everyone gets a ribbon, and praise becomes a meaningless narcotic to soothe egoistic distemper.”
—Gerald Early (b. 1952)
“But the divinest poem, or the life of a great man, is the severest satire.... The greater the genius, the keener the edge of the satire.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Both the ancestry and posterity of Grief go further than the ancestry and posterity of Joy.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)