Two years ago my parents' dear friend John Olver died. I only wrote the first of two posts I had planned to write on him. We had a visiting lecturer from Botswana at school on almost-last-minute notice and I never got to write more. But the first post is here and will tell you a bit about him. (There is a good link to a short bio.) John was a warm, witty, intelligent man who worked for UNDP, the United Nations Development Programme, for most of his life. I think of him when I hear news of Gaza because he was one of the few people who managed to get anything done there. In his case, it was bringing fresh water to Gaza. He wrote a book about it, but I think it was a self-publish and never got out there into the wide world. I once saw a used copy on Amazon, though. It was called Roadblocks and Mindblocks: Partnering with The PLO and Israel.
John died in March of 2008, a month full of deaths and with Holy Week in it besides.
Today John's wife Ruth Olver died. Ruth and my mother met at Hunter College in uptown Manhattan when they were in their late teens. They used to study at the library together, taking turns napping. Later, when they were both married, the two couples became close friends and my mother became godmother to Ruth's second child, a daughter. I used to get hand-me-down clothes from Amy; they would arrive in a package at our house in Paris, all the way from wherever the Olvers were at the time. For a while they lived in Geneva.
We received news of Ruth's passing from Ruth and John's son this evening. (Interesting note: both he and I entered the Episcopal Church in our middle age.) Ruth had been very ill for several years. She had Parkinson's and other ailments, and she had recently turned 92 years old.
Ruth Olver was an early civil rights activist, attempting to integrate public facilities in Washington, D.C. in the early 1940s (as did my mother's late brother, Don Rothenberg). Her son wrote, "A brilliant woman of her generation, after her marriage to the late John Olver in 1944 she devoted herself to raising her children and supporting the UN career of our late father. However, she was always very active in organizing schools, supplies and other social support for children wherever he served, especially in Libya and later in the Palestinian Territories."
In her forties, back in the U.S., Ruth became a psychiatric social worker. In addition to an active clinical practice, she was a pioneer in campaigning against spousal and other domestic abuse in Westchester County. (For those of you who don't know, that's a suburban county north of New York City; part of it is fancy shmancy and it also has middle-class neighborhoods and towns and pockets of poverty; domestic abuse does not know class lines.) Ruth was a founder of the Women's Justice Council, which lobbies the police and courts for justice for victim-survivors of domestic abuse and and provides childcare and other support to them while they are pursuing their rights. (I'm paraphrasing Richard's letter here.)
Ruth was a founder of My Sister's Place, a Westchester County shelter for victims of abuse. The family has requested that in lieu of flowers, donations be made to that shelter.
Please remember Ruth Olver and her children and grandchildren in your prayers. Remember also John, who preceded her in death two years ago and who like her worked for the good of humanity. Remember also my parents, who have yet again lost a dear friend of their generation.
Showing posts with label elders. Show all posts
Showing posts with label elders. Show all posts
Saturday, March 20, 2010
Saturday, March 13, 2010
Why Mexico City
Someone on Facebook asked why my parents got married in Mexico City.
Since it's too long an answer for Facebook, here goes.
My father got his master's degree at the Columbia University Journalism School. He was not yet 21 years old. He graduated at the top of his class (1939) and was one of three recipients of a Pulitzer Traveling Fellowship. This gave him the opportunity to travel and write for a year.
He headed for Europe in June. He knew by then that he wanted to be a foreign correspondent. He traveled through Western Europe, then Eastern Europe and the USSR and back to Western Europe. Well, if you remember your world history, you remember what started happening on September 1, 1939. World War II broke out.
My father had hoped to stay and find work as a war correspondent, but despite his letters of recommendation, he couldn't find a job, and he went home, not on a Cunard liner as he had on the way over, but on a freighter taking refugees back to the U.S. Among the passengers was my father's cabin-mate --not by choice-- who turned out to be, so he said and my father had no reason to doubt him, Prince Felix Yussupov. You may remember him as the man who killed Rasputin. My father notes in his memoir that he "had never before met anybody who had killed a man, let alone boasted about it. Sharing a cabin with him was fun on an otherwise tense voyage, but I didn't sleep too well thinking about my new friend, the murderer." (p.23)
FoAoH decided to finish up his fellowship in Mexico City, so off he went. There were many estadounidenses there at the time: Mexico was warm, welcoming, and inexpensive. It was also, as my father discovered, desperately poor, and the Mexico City metropolitan area was already crowded then with a population over five million. He started freelancing and stringing (working part-time) for several newspapers and news services.
After he'd been there for a while, MoAoH got sick of waiting up in Brooklyn. She'd finished college by then, so, as I like to tell it, she said to her parents "Bye-bye, I'm going to marry FoAoH!" Okay, it wasn't entirely like that. My parents had both turned 21 by then, it was now early 1940, and my father saw that they could live quite well on under $15 a week, so they decided that they would get married sooner rather than later. My father wrote a letter to my mother's father, as one did in those days, and promised he would take good care of her. They had known each other for years so my mother's parents knew my father was a trustworthy sort, and they knew my parents wanted to get married. People didn't "get engaged" in those days, at least in my parents' circles. It was the Depression and nobody was buying or showing off diamonds on their left ring fingers, and my mother's family was never terribly conventional anyway, though they certainly believed in marriage.
My parents met at James Madison High School in Brooklyn, New York. They didn't become sweethearts till college but were in the same group of friends in high school. Like many in their high school --mostly children and grandchildren of Jewish immigrants-- they attended public colleges: she went to Hunter College, which was all women at the time; he went to City College, which was all men. Both of those schools were way uptown in Manhattan, of course, and my family's version of "In my day we had to walk five miles to school in the snow, uphill in both directions!" was "It was the Depression, we lived at home, and we took the subway to school an hour and a half in each direction." Three hours of commuting a day to get an education. My mother is the one who talks about this.
My father was editor of the college newspaper and helped get a corrupt college president on the road to resignation, but that is another story and you can read it in FoAoH's memoir. He went on to a private university (Columbia) for professional journalism study. My brother also went there, years later, and I contemplated doing the same but didn't.
Back to the Mexico story. My mother took the bus down to Mexico City from New York. Yes, the bus. More like buses. I think her first stop was Indianapolis because she had an uncle there. Not sure whether or where she stopped after that, but it was a five-day trip. At any rate, she got to Mexico City safe and sound on a Friday, and the following Tuesday she and my father were married.
They married at the American Embassy because they were patriotic young people and wanted to be married on American soil. But the Ambassador wasn't empowered to officiate at weddings (unlike some other foreign diplomats) so they got a Mexican Justice of the Peace. Only civil marriages were valid in Mexico. A wedding at the JP's Registry office would cost two pesos, but they decided to splurge and go for the 32-peso wedding, which is what it cost to get married outside the Registry. 32 pesos in those days was about 8 dollars.
Foreign Service officers couldn't officiate at marriages but they could witness them (in the church that's the same thing, so I don't quite get the distinction, but there you have it) and issue a certificate of marriage so in addition to the Mexican wedding certificate, my parents got a U.S. certificate (for one dollar extra). I'm not sure whether the Consul General or the Ambassador signed the piece of paper, but they were both there. The Ambassador at the time was Josephus Daniels, a former Secretary of the Navy under President Woodrow Wilson who was a former newsman -- how appropriate. I remembered he was a Southerner, but what I had forgotten and just re-read in the Mexico chapter of the memoir is that he was the founder-editor of the Raleigh News & Observer. That's Raleigh, North Carolina.
Meanwhile, my paternal grandparents had expressed the desire for my parents to have a Jewish wedding ceremony, so several days later PoAoH located a rabbi, which in Mexico City was not so easy, and he witnessed and officiated at a religious ceremony. It was in Spanish and Hebrew and they had a sheet or a tablecloth for a chuppah (the traditional wedding canopy) and my father didn't have a kippah (yarmulke) so he used a handkerchief tied at four corners. The part of this story I love is that the rabbi lived on Jesus Maria Street. Now there's a title for a novel: The Rabbi on Jesus Maria Street.
Parents of Acts of Hope did have a little reception with a wedding cake. The cake was the work of two Greek-American pastry cooks from Manhattan who after fighting in the International Brigade in the Spanish Civil War (i.e. against Franco's forces) had settled in Mexico and opened a restaurant and bakery.
My father's memoir doesn't say and I haven't asked my parents, but it occurred to me a few years ago upon re-reading my father's description that these guys, Nick and Mike, were probably a couple. But maybe they weren't.
The cake had two white doves on top.
The big story in 1940 in Mexico was, of course, Trostsky's assassination, and my father, as a freshly minted journalist, got to cover it. There was a substantial cast of characters in the background shenanigans leading up to the assassination, including an American woman who had been one of Trotsky's aides. My father was stringing for the Jack Starr-Hunt News Service and among their clients was the N.Y. Daily News tabloid, which could care less about the politics of the story. Who cared if Stalin's arch-enemy had just been killed? The Daily News fired off to my father a cable that read "RUSH 1,500 WORDS GIRLIE ANGLE." Welcome to highfalutin foreign correspondent work.
After a few months in Mexico, with the fellowship year over, my parents returned to the U.S. and Brooklyn, where both their families lived. My father got a stop-gap editing job at the Brooklyn Academy of Music while hunting for a real job in journalism. At last, after six months, a real job materialized, and off my parents went to Herkimer, New York (for those of you who don't know, that's in the boonies, at least from a New York City perspective) where my father worked on the Evening Telegram newspaper for the magnificent sum of $35 per week.
The following year Pearl Harbor happened and my parents moved to Washington.
But that is another story.
Since it's too long an answer for Facebook, here goes.
My father got his master's degree at the Columbia University Journalism School. He was not yet 21 years old. He graduated at the top of his class (1939) and was one of three recipients of a Pulitzer Traveling Fellowship. This gave him the opportunity to travel and write for a year.
He headed for Europe in June. He knew by then that he wanted to be a foreign correspondent. He traveled through Western Europe, then Eastern Europe and the USSR and back to Western Europe. Well, if you remember your world history, you remember what started happening on September 1, 1939. World War II broke out.
My father had hoped to stay and find work as a war correspondent, but despite his letters of recommendation, he couldn't find a job, and he went home, not on a Cunard liner as he had on the way over, but on a freighter taking refugees back to the U.S. Among the passengers was my father's cabin-mate --not by choice-- who turned out to be, so he said and my father had no reason to doubt him, Prince Felix Yussupov. You may remember him as the man who killed Rasputin. My father notes in his memoir that he "had never before met anybody who had killed a man, let alone boasted about it. Sharing a cabin with him was fun on an otherwise tense voyage, but I didn't sleep too well thinking about my new friend, the murderer." (p.23)
FoAoH decided to finish up his fellowship in Mexico City, so off he went. There were many estadounidenses there at the time: Mexico was warm, welcoming, and inexpensive. It was also, as my father discovered, desperately poor, and the Mexico City metropolitan area was already crowded then with a population over five million. He started freelancing and stringing (working part-time) for several newspapers and news services.
After he'd been there for a while, MoAoH got sick of waiting up in Brooklyn. She'd finished college by then, so, as I like to tell it, she said to her parents "Bye-bye, I'm going to marry FoAoH!" Okay, it wasn't entirely like that. My parents had both turned 21 by then, it was now early 1940, and my father saw that they could live quite well on under $15 a week, so they decided that they would get married sooner rather than later. My father wrote a letter to my mother's father, as one did in those days, and promised he would take good care of her. They had known each other for years so my mother's parents knew my father was a trustworthy sort, and they knew my parents wanted to get married. People didn't "get engaged" in those days, at least in my parents' circles. It was the Depression and nobody was buying or showing off diamonds on their left ring fingers, and my mother's family was never terribly conventional anyway, though they certainly believed in marriage.
My parents met at James Madison High School in Brooklyn, New York. They didn't become sweethearts till college but were in the same group of friends in high school. Like many in their high school --mostly children and grandchildren of Jewish immigrants-- they attended public colleges: she went to Hunter College, which was all women at the time; he went to City College, which was all men. Both of those schools were way uptown in Manhattan, of course, and my family's version of "In my day we had to walk five miles to school in the snow, uphill in both directions!" was "It was the Depression, we lived at home, and we took the subway to school an hour and a half in each direction." Three hours of commuting a day to get an education. My mother is the one who talks about this.
My father was editor of the college newspaper and helped get a corrupt college president on the road to resignation, but that is another story and you can read it in FoAoH's memoir. He went on to a private university (Columbia) for professional journalism study. My brother also went there, years later, and I contemplated doing the same but didn't.
Back to the Mexico story. My mother took the bus down to Mexico City from New York. Yes, the bus. More like buses. I think her first stop was Indianapolis because she had an uncle there. Not sure whether or where she stopped after that, but it was a five-day trip. At any rate, she got to Mexico City safe and sound on a Friday, and the following Tuesday she and my father were married.
They married at the American Embassy because they were patriotic young people and wanted to be married on American soil. But the Ambassador wasn't empowered to officiate at weddings (unlike some other foreign diplomats) so they got a Mexican Justice of the Peace. Only civil marriages were valid in Mexico. A wedding at the JP's Registry office would cost two pesos, but they decided to splurge and go for the 32-peso wedding, which is what it cost to get married outside the Registry. 32 pesos in those days was about 8 dollars.
Foreign Service officers couldn't officiate at marriages but they could witness them (in the church that's the same thing, so I don't quite get the distinction, but there you have it) and issue a certificate of marriage so in addition to the Mexican wedding certificate, my parents got a U.S. certificate (for one dollar extra). I'm not sure whether the Consul General or the Ambassador signed the piece of paper, but they were both there. The Ambassador at the time was Josephus Daniels, a former Secretary of the Navy under President Woodrow Wilson who was a former newsman -- how appropriate. I remembered he was a Southerner, but what I had forgotten and just re-read in the Mexico chapter of the memoir is that he was the founder-editor of the Raleigh News & Observer. That's Raleigh, North Carolina.
Meanwhile, my paternal grandparents had expressed the desire for my parents to have a Jewish wedding ceremony, so several days later PoAoH located a rabbi, which in Mexico City was not so easy, and he witnessed and officiated at a religious ceremony. It was in Spanish and Hebrew and they had a sheet or a tablecloth for a chuppah (the traditional wedding canopy) and my father didn't have a kippah (yarmulke) so he used a handkerchief tied at four corners. The part of this story I love is that the rabbi lived on Jesus Maria Street. Now there's a title for a novel: The Rabbi on Jesus Maria Street.
Parents of Acts of Hope did have a little reception with a wedding cake. The cake was the work of two Greek-American pastry cooks from Manhattan who after fighting in the International Brigade in the Spanish Civil War (i.e. against Franco's forces) had settled in Mexico and opened a restaurant and bakery.
My father's memoir doesn't say and I haven't asked my parents, but it occurred to me a few years ago upon re-reading my father's description that these guys, Nick and Mike, were probably a couple. But maybe they weren't.
The cake had two white doves on top.
The big story in 1940 in Mexico was, of course, Trostsky's assassination, and my father, as a freshly minted journalist, got to cover it. There was a substantial cast of characters in the background shenanigans leading up to the assassination, including an American woman who had been one of Trotsky's aides. My father was stringing for the Jack Starr-Hunt News Service and among their clients was the N.Y. Daily News tabloid, which could care less about the politics of the story. Who cared if Stalin's arch-enemy had just been killed? The Daily News fired off to my father a cable that read "RUSH 1,500 WORDS GIRLIE ANGLE." Welcome to highfalutin foreign correspondent work.
After a few months in Mexico, with the fellowship year over, my parents returned to the U.S. and Brooklyn, where both their families lived. My father got a stop-gap editing job at the Brooklyn Academy of Music while hunting for a real job in journalism. At last, after six months, a real job materialized, and off my parents went to Herkimer, New York (for those of you who don't know, that's in the boonies, at least from a New York City perspective) where my father worked on the Evening Telegram newspaper for the magnificent sum of $35 per week.
The following year Pearl Harbor happened and my parents moved to Washington.
But that is another story.
Friday, March 12, 2010
The Amazing Parents of Acts of Hope: 70 Years Today!
The Amazing Parents of Acts of Hope are still alive and kicking at 91, after a scare this winter when Mother of Acts of Hope had medical episode which put her in the hospital for a little under a week and sent me dashing up to Boston on four hours' notice back in January. It took a while for her to get better but she is up and about and we are grateful, because today is a big day. Seventy, yes, 70, count' em, 70 years ago, on March 12, 1940, Mother and Father of Acts of Hope were married in Mexico City. Why Mexico City? That is a tale for this weekend. What I can tell you now is that Mother of Acts of Hope, age 21 at the time, took the bus, or rather several buses, from Brooklyn, New York to Mexico, D.F., Mexico. Now there's determination. And love!
We children are not up in Boston but will be going there in a few weeks when everyone in several different countries can get schedules coordinated, and we are looking forward to it. For now we are using electronic means to communicate, and of course flowers.
I'm always hesitant to post family photos on the blog and never post photos of children anywhere on the Web, blog or Facebook or websites, but if you are on Facebook and are a FB friend of mine and go to my profile, you can see in one of ththe family album some photos of my parents which I put up a while back. Note: I am off Facebook on Fridays, Saturdays, and most of Sundays in Lent, and it's a good thing. I may do more of this after Lent is over.
It is spring break at Guilford and I have been sleeping long hours and working on the Big Tome as well as taking care of this and that (never enough time during term time to do the simplest things, like make phone calls to physicians about check-ups and clean the kitchen floor and find lost pieces of paper) so no special celebration on my end today, except for a little family-in-the-Spirit time locally. The Adorable Godson and his bff are coming here for lunch --we haven't had a meal together in too long -- and so I must go to the kitchen. Good thing the boys aren't coming till an hour from now.
In other news, the Right Reverend and Right Honourable Maya Pavlova, FBE, is lolling against the laptop, looking sweet and calm, but she has a serious case of spring fever and broke the glass in a picture frame two or three days ago in a morning mad dash about the house. Outdoors the daffodils are blooming under grey skies and the birds are out in full force. Over and out.
Monday, January 4, 2010
RIP Mary Daly, feminist thinker and teacher, wild star
"There are and will be those who think I have gone overboard. Let them rest assured that this assessment is correct, probably beyond their wildest imagination, and that I will continue to do so." - Mary Daly, 1928-2010More on this pioneering thinker here and here.
Mary Daly died this morning. Obituaries should be forthcoming in the next couple of days. Blaze on, Mary.
Photograph by Gail Bryan (c) 1992
Saturday, November 28, 2009
Today she is two!
My great-niece, who lives in Portugal with her big brother and her mother and father (who is also known here as Nephew the Elder) is two years old today!
I still haven't met her face to face, but I am determined to get to Lisbon this coming year. Meanwhile, I gush over the pictures.
Happy Birthday to B! She is, by the way, a strong and determined young lady. Is anybody surprised?
And a belated Happy Birthday to the Fabulous Father of Acts of Hope, who turned 91 three weeks ago. Now both my parents are 91 years old.
Photo: Lisbon, Portugal
Friday, October 23, 2009
Sölle on limits, transcendence, and the Communion of Saints
At a peace gatheringWe’re not only ten thousand I said
there are more of us here
the dead of both wars
are with us
A journalist came and asked
how could I know that
haven’t you seen them
i ask the clueless guy
haven’t you heard your grandmother
groaning when they started it up again
do you live all alone
without any dead who drop in
for a drink with you
do you really think
you are only yourself
how could I know that
haven’t you seen them
i ask the clueless guy
haven’t you heard your grandmother
groaning when they started it up again
do you live all alone
without any dead who drop in
for a drink with you
do you really think
you are only yourself
****--Dorothee Sölle
******The Mystery of Death
******2007 (posthumous book - Sölle died in 2003 with the manuscript in draft)
The English version of the poem is by the book's translators, Nancy Lukens-Rumscheidt and Martin Lukens-Rumscheidt. The German original, "Auf einer Friedensversammlung," appeared in Dorothee Sölle, Loben ohne Lugen (Berlin, Wolfgang Fietkau, 2000).
Photo by the blogger New York Portraits, 2008.
Friday, September 11, 2009
Family time
Brother of Acts of Hope and Beloved of Brother of Acts of Hope are flying in from Europe on Saturday and we are converging on Parents of Acts of Hope. I get in a day before the Siblings do. I will be in New England for barely two days because I teach first thing in the a.m. on Mondays, but the far-flung Acts of Hope family makes the best of short amounts of time, so we are all happy happy happy. "All" being the two older generations. The two younger generations (Nephew the Elder, Nephew the Younger, their partners, and two kidlings) are off in their usual faraway countries.
Blogging will be scarce, but I will at some point put up the promised "write the media" post in the "DO SOMETHING for Health Care Reform" series.
I'll be with media types all weekend, so we'll see if they have any advice on this beyond the ideas I have collected or cooked up already. Lots of folks in the news biz in the Acts of Hope family, at least in the two older generations. The young 'uns didn't want to touch journalism with a ten-foot pole. Then again, one of them is in the wine biz, so we are grateful. The Really Young 'Uns may or may not go into journalism. At this point they are just busy being Really Young.
Shabbat Shalom and happy weekend, everyone.
Saturday, August 1, 2009
Fabulous Father of Acts of Hope Takes on Health Care Reform
Current Events:
PRESENTERS:
[Father of Acts of Hope] & [FoAoH's Friend], MD
OBAMA AND OUR HEALTH:
THE BATTLE OVER HEALTH CARE REFORM
*************
What's wrong with our present system?
What are the proposals for reform? What are the options for reform?
What is the "public option" ?
What about single payer?
What is the timeline?
What's the issue over money? How do we finance reform?
Who are the stakeholders?
What can we do as active citizens?
What about single payer?
What is the timeline?
What's the issue over money? How do we finance reform?
Who are the stakeholders?
What can we do as active citizens?
To discuss this and other related questions
in one of the most crucial
issues of our time,
issues of our time,
the next Current Events forum will take place on
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
[time, place]
[at my parents' retirement community]
*************
Both presenters are ninety-ish years old. Go, Daddy!
***************
P.S. FoAoH favors single-payer health care.
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
On to the Abruzzi
The intrepid Parents of Acts of Hope have (if all has gone according to schedule) wrapped up their five day stay with the great-grandchildren (one boy, one girl) and their parents (Nephew the Elder and Lovely Spouse) and left for the third country in their semi-whirwind trip. Those of you who read my Italian earthquake update earlier this month may remember that Nephew the Younger and Lovely Partner live in the Abruzzi (a.k.a. Abruzzo), though not in the part of the province that had the earthquake. So Parents of Acts of Hope were due to fly into Rome and be picked up by Nephew the Younger and driven up to the hills an hour or so three hours away [edited 5/1 after getting accurate info] for a few days and nights in the Abruzzi, not too far from the Adriatic Sea. This will be their first time meeting Lovely Partner; I haven't met her yet either and look forward to doing so in the coming year.
Stay tuned and keep up the prayers. So far, so good. Brother of Acts of Hope and his Beloved spent the weekend in Portugal so four generations of the Acts of Hope family were together. I was the missing sibling in our generation. Nephew the Younger was the missing sibling in the next generation. It's already a wonder that so many in the far-flung family could be together at once. Hurrah for them. I am drooling in anticipation of the pictures and the stories.Meanwhile, back at the funny farm here, classes have ended (my last one was last night) and I am spending the coming week writing and grading -and reading and grading and writing and reading and grading and writing. A small brown bunny had a leisurely lunch behind the house, nibbling away at the back yard while I washed dishes and watched out the window. +Maya Pavlova ignored the bunny. Squirrels and birds are another story.
I am also pondering images of the Good Shepherd along with the shepherd and sheep readings for this weekend. Beeeeeeeeehhhh.
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
Yahrzeit: Krister Stendahl
I have been thinking on and off of Krister Stendahl, who died a year ago today.
More later in the week when I have a breather. Just worked two 15-16 hour work days and one 12 hour work day and it is time for tax filing wrap-up and a good long sleep.
More later in the week when I have a breather. Just worked two 15-16 hour work days and one 12 hour work day and it is time for tax filing wrap-up and a good long sleep.
Saturday, April 11, 2009
Jose Hobday, Native teacher, Franciscan sister, dead at 80. Rest in peace, rise in glory!
From WATER, the Women's Alliance for Theology, Ethics, and Ritual, I have learned of the death this week of José Hobday, Seneca elder and Franciscan sister, storyteller, speaker, and teacher, at the age of 80.NCR story here.
Frederic and Mary Anne Brussat of Spirituality & Practice picked up the NCR story and wrote their own obit here.
A great woman. I had the pleasure of hearing her speak years and years ago.
Photo: John Zeuli.
Sister José died April 5 at the Casa de la Luz Hospice in Tucson, Arizona. A memorial Mass will be held on Wednesday, April 15, at 6:30 p.m., at Our Mother of Sorrows Parish in Tucson.
(Couldn't find the photo credit for this one.)
Saturday, March 28, 2009
Anne Rothenberg, R.I.P.
My aunt Anne Rothenberg, née Anne Becker, died of cardiac arrest early this evening in New York.
Her son, my cousin Ron, said that she went peacefully. She had been in failing health and was undergoing physical therapy at a nursing home following a stay in the hospital after surgery.
Anne sang and played the piano (in her younger years she performed as Anne Barry) and was a vocal coach for Broadway performers. Her husband, my uncle Bill, died a few years ago after several years in a nursing home following a stroke. Bill had been a strong, handsome, athletic man, an educator, coach, and summer camp director and it was hard for many to see him weakened and unable to speak much after his stroke. Anne visited him every day after his move to the residential facility, staying most of the day and, after lunch, playing the piano for him and the other residents and singing their favorite tunes.
When we were younger and all involved in the summer camp my grandparents founded (Anne and Bill directed it for some years) Anne composed and directed children's musicals. At our big family reunion a couple of years ago, she sat down at the piano and played and sang, and several of us cousins sang with her. She was a spunky, dramatic, generous woman.
Anne was the mother not only of Ron, who cared for her kindly and diligently in her last months, but also of Lisa, who recently lost her husband Gerald. This is a lot of loss for my cousin Lisa.
May Anne rest in peace. May the Holy One bring consolation to Anne's children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, and may her memory be a blessing.
Her son, my cousin Ron, said that she went peacefully. She had been in failing health and was undergoing physical therapy at a nursing home following a stay in the hospital after surgery.
Anne sang and played the piano (in her younger years she performed as Anne Barry) and was a vocal coach for Broadway performers. Her husband, my uncle Bill, died a few years ago after several years in a nursing home following a stroke. Bill had been a strong, handsome, athletic man, an educator, coach, and summer camp director and it was hard for many to see him weakened and unable to speak much after his stroke. Anne visited him every day after his move to the residential facility, staying most of the day and, after lunch, playing the piano for him and the other residents and singing their favorite tunes.
When we were younger and all involved in the summer camp my grandparents founded (Anne and Bill directed it for some years) Anne composed and directed children's musicals. At our big family reunion a couple of years ago, she sat down at the piano and played and sang, and several of us cousins sang with her. She was a spunky, dramatic, generous woman.
Anne was the mother not only of Ron, who cared for her kindly and diligently in her last months, but also of Lisa, who recently lost her husband Gerald. This is a lot of loss for my cousin Lisa.
May Anne rest in peace. May the Holy One bring consolation to Anne's children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, and may her memory be a blessing.
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