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I
am the eldest of five siblings. I am four years older than my kid brother,
ten years older than my kid sister, thirteen years older than my baby
brother and fourteen years older than my baby sister.
Our parents were
the son of immigrants from Eastern Europe and the daughter of an immigrant
from Czarist Russia and of a second generation immigrant from the Kaiser’s
Germany. Our grandparents were all entrepreneurial in their own rights.
Our paternal grandparents owned a paint and hardware store in the Kingsbridge
section of New York City. I believe they had been farmers for a time
and that my paternal grandmother had also worked as a cook for a resort
hotel in Catskill Mountains of New York.
Our parents knew
each other in grammar school. Our mother was a self-proclaimed “tom-boy”
who played baseball with the boys when they “needed another man”
and she was all there was. Our father worked for his folks, which was
apparently not atypical in those days, either minding the store or helping
on residential painting jobs they might have gotten from time-to-time.
They married while our father was in uniform during the Second World
War. He had hitchhiked across the country and, when Pearl Harbor was
attacked and his number was picked for the draft, he hitchhiked back
home to New York to join the Army. He served in various capacities including
as a Guard for Prisoners of War in Texas.
My siblings and
I have each given our parents two grandchildren ranging in age from
my sons of 50 and 49 years old respectively to my niece born late in
2003.
Our father died
in August of 1996 at the age of 76, may his memory be for a blessing,so he really missed out on knowing
three of his grandchildren and now great grand children. One of them was named in his memory according
to our cultural and religious custom.
My mother did at the age of 96, may her memory be for a blessing. She showed up to work every day in my office
until a few years ago, was active in a national non-denomiational philanthropic
organization drove her own car until a few yesrs ago and maintains a
lifelong loving relationship with her older sister, who was suffering
from Parkensons Disease, by making sure that their every-couple-of-weeks
get-togethers for brunch followed by their manicures and pedicures take
place. She embarked on a new "career" serving as
moderator for the Current Events Forum at the Mid-Island Y-JCC.
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