Toba's Tale -- Stories Aching to be Told

"Toba" in Budapest, 1946

Legacy. What stories do we leave our children and grandchildren and the generations we will never know? For as much as our genetics may play a role in their future, what about the courage and the spirit they have also inherited? What of battles fought and won by their ancestors? Loves lost or lasting? How do we make sure they know their family’s narrative?  

A book landed in the mail the other day that prodded me, that reminded me, that recording my family’s history, passing on the stories I heard as a child, is on my to-do list. It’s hard. I keep putting it off. Maybe because I don’t want to accept that some day I’ll be too feeble or senile to take on the task. But if not now, when?

The book sent to me last week by a federal judge –the story of her mother – is an emotional reminder of why, some day soon, I must start writing for my children.

Every single person I’ve ever met who survived the Holocaust –including my own parents -- has a miracle story to tell. That’s the only way anyone escaped. It wasn’t like you could just walk out of Europe. You needed luck. And you needed a determination to take action. As my father always said, “Opportunity is everywhere. You just have to grab it.”

The story of Terry Goldstein Herskovits is that kind of story. When opportunity arose, even in the midst of bad luck, she grabbed it.

 Once a flower, Always a Flower will never make the best seller list. It’s a read-in-a-night memoir. A legacy for her family. Importantly, though, it is yet another entry into the indisputable record of this unbelievable period of history. 

In brief: Terry, a 14-year-old Hungarian girl, from an impoverished rural family, makes her way to Budapest in 1939, with no job, no resources. On day two, she overhears a woman – Gizi --  in a market complaining of her need for a seamstress. Terry (then "Toba"), with virtually no sewing experience, convinces Gizi to take her on. By 1944, when the Nazis begin deporting Hungarian Jews, including Terry’s parents and siblings, the two have formed a mother-daughter relationship. They rip off their yellow stars and hide in a tiny farmhouse attic for six months. No bathroom. No activity. Excruciating heat. Food secretly passed up by the Christian farmer.

But then they are discovered and sent to the ghetto that has been built in Budapest, awaiting transport to death camps. And here comes luck: as Terry is herded onto a human cattle car, a Hungarian guard, struck by her beauty, “threw me down from the train, muttering something like ‘it’s a shame.’” Finding her way back to Budapest, she goes to the Swedish Embassy where Raoul Wallenberg is giving Jews the lifeline of papers. The line is long. “I had chutzpah!” Terry writes. “I maneuvered to the front of the line.” She gets papers for herself and Gizi to remain in a safe house.

After the Russians “liberate” Hungary, she miraculously escapes a group of drunken Russian soldiers intent on raping her; marries, has two children and tries, in 1950, to sneak out of Hungary but their transport guide betrays them to the Russians and her husband is shot to death; she is jailed in a cell shared by 28 others while her children are raised by Gizi; after three years, she is finally freed, remarries, and in the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 successfully gets across the border with her husband and children. They make a life for themselves in New Jersey.

It’s a movie script. Except it really happened. Telling the story with her mother is Judy Wizmur, the daughter who was only a year old when her mother was jailed and just seven when the family finally escaped Communist rule.

Now a federal bankruptcy judge, Judge Wizmur writes:

“By sharing her stories with me from the time I was young, my mother gave me another very special gift. She gave me a unique perspective on life – the gift of understanding that the ups and downs of daily life are relatively inconsequential….I have tried to measure the difficulties I occasionally encounter against the courage, endurance, grit and determination shown by my mother as she experienced the extraordinary events of her life.”

Recently, at a meeting of our Project Renewment group, where women discuss their issues of transition out of careers, Judge Judy talked about her goals when she retires in May. Among them is spending more time with her mother, who turns 90 in December.

I now understand why.

Finding Love When You Least Expect It

Love stories. Yes, a few have appeared on these pages. Especially that of Nancy Lynn and Hal Kessler, whom I interviewed for Valentine’s Day two years ago. Their late love blossomed after a chance encounter at a supermarket – he had been her high school teacher. Fifty years before.

Hal and Nancy's Florida toast, 2013

Of course there was no hanky panky between them way back then. But some latent chemistry eventually brought them together.  Nancy recently wrote me to say that she thinks of me each Valentine’s Day, as I do of them.  They are still together, planning another vacation in Florida.

On Valentine’s Day, it's worthwhile re-reading Sue Carson's story about her relationship with her mother and how, in the end, she learned to love her. "I decided at that moment that I was going to really work at opening up to love,’’ she told me. "I decided I would be a more loving, devoted person, particularly to [my husband] John.  Because I realize he’s my core. He’s who I’m with.  If I can love him more, that’s the place to begin. Some days are easier than others. Some days are hard. But there’s this huge change and shift in my relationship with him." 

Let me end this Valentine’s post with another love story.

In 2012, I reconnected (through my college class reunion) with Becky Burckmyer, who lost the love of her life to death. And then, by trying to heal herself and save her grand old shore home, she opened a Bed and Breakfast that quickly got rave reviews.

And then, doing what she loved, she found love. A longtime friend turned into something more.

“Bobby and I,” she wrote me last week, “are still very much an item: he is living with me in Marblehead now. In March, we rent an apartment in Andover while he coaches crew for three months, then we move to his house in Chatham for the summer and rather than doing B and B, I rent my house, furnished, by the month, for an outrageous price. I just couldn't keep up the work with the B and B--it was doing very well but I was exhausted.

Also a strain on the love affair.”

Thanks to everyone who is reading UnRetiring.  I’ve surpassed 50,000 hits.
 I love having followers who think I have something worthwhile to say.  If you have a love story to  share, please do!!

And to my Larry….I love you!

To Gray or Not to Gray?

Being a model helps

A fashion trend is emerging, at least in New York City,  and it’s one I’m not comfortable with.

Yet.

Just as it became de rigeur for New York City men to wear black, black, and more black, a la Steve Jobs, it’s now white, white, and more white for women.

I’m talking hair.

I have two New Yorker friends who have joyfully stopped coloring their hair.  And the initial shock of arriving in town and seeing them au naturel is fading for me. They actually look pretty youthful, despite their hair. Or maybe I am seeing past their coiffes, in the way you do at a high school reunion, when after awhile your mind’s eye sees your old friends the way they once were.

Last night, at a dinner party, a woman whose hair is finally just growing back after chemotherapy, took off the gray manicured wig she was wearing.

I tried it on.

“You look good,” my husband said.  Dashing to a mirror, I didn’t recognize myself.

Was he just being polite? Or – as the guys at dinner said – “Think of the money  you’ll save!”

I hadn’t planned on writing about this major life transition that arguably should be easier to make once you’ve left your career. But an essay in today’s Wall St. Journal reinforced the queasiness of this decision, even for a woman’s spouse.

When his wife (who must live in New York) asked him if she should go gray, Rob Lazebnik writes that he had visions of being “married to the Queen of England.”

Helen Mirren as Queen Elizabeth

He pondered his discomfort, concluding that “society, sadly, deems old as unattractive, and that for some reason gray equals old more in women than in men.”

Congresswomen are not gray.

Women newscasters are not gray.

And no way did he really want his wife to go (old and) gray, though he couldn’t come out and say it.

After thinking about how to respond to her, he eventually “dropped a bomb, one that I knew would strike deep inside the bunker.” He told her: “You know, I remember when I met your mother and thought to myself what a great-looking gray-haired lady she was.”

Yeah. I’m not going to rush out to look like my mother for a little while longer. But then, I don’t live in New York.

"Salami!" -- Ah, the Memories

The great comedian Carl Reiner once gave a memorable lecture -- gag fest, really -- that my husband and I attended and have never forgotten.
He joked about the issue of name recall as you get to a certain age. The problem, he said, isn't that you lose the name. It just takes longer to find it in the encyclopedias of information you've stored.

 So, he said, when a name is slow in coming to him, he substitutes the word "salami."
As in,  "I bumped into… salami.. at the deli the other day." Or, "I'm reading a really great book by… salami."

Since then, my husband and I shout out "salami" and laugh when the wurst thing happens and don't feel so bad about any slippage.
But now, the New York Times reports that Reiner might be right on pepperoni.  Our brains are just too stuffed.
"The larger the library you have in your head, the longer it usually takes to find a particular word," it reports of a study on word retrieval.
Published in Topics in Cognitive Science, the study talks about two kinds of intelligence -- "fluid" intelligence, which "includes short-term memory, like holding a phone number in mind, analytical reasoning, and the ability to tune out distractions, like ambient conversation," according to the Times article. And "crystallized" intelligence, which is "accumulated knowledge, vocabulary and expertise."
What really may be happening as you age is that "crystallized" intelligence accumulates to the point where there's less room for "fluid" intelligence.
"Crystallized knowledge (as measured by New York Times crosswords, for example) climbs sharply between ages 20 and 50 and then plateaus, even as the fluid kind (like analytical reasoning) is dropping steadily — by more than 50 percent between ages 20 and 70 in some studies," the Times reports.

To me, that "crystallized" knowledge sounds a lot like "wisdom" -- the kind of contribution that elders could make to the workplace, our communities and to our families.

Ah, if only they would listen. ...

Burnishing Olympic Gold, 50 Years Later

The victorious Vesper 8, posing in 1964. Bill Stowe is on right.

As Olympic rower Bill Stowe says at the end of his book, "All Together," about winning gold:
"There is no greater high and it can endure for years."
50 years, to be exact.
It's been that long since a motley crew from the Vesper Boat Club won gold at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics in the eight-oared boat. Many of those men in that surprise upset will be honored tomorrow at a banquet  hosted by Vesper. For that occasion, I wrote a piece in today's Philadelphia Inquirer, which I'm reprinting below.   Interestingly, two of the rowers -- Bill Stowe and Emory Clark -- have written books about this seminal experience in their lives. (Clark's is yet unpublished). And all of them, every four years, at Olympic time, are asked to talk about their victory and show their medals, now touched by thousands of hands.

By Dorothy Brown

'Old men." "A curious crew." "A crusty bunch of adults." That's what the

press called the eight-man crew from Vesper Boat Club as they swept the

national trials and, in a huge upset, headed for the Tokyo Olympics.

The year was 1964, a half-century ago, and the ragtag Vesper crew had

just upended six decades of collegiate dominance of the Olympics'

premier rowing event. Their feat also placed Boathouse Row in an

international spotlight, secured its prominence as a coaching mecca, and

helped catapult the sport here and around the country.

Playing a significant role was Olympian Jack Kelly, brother of Grace and

son of John B., for whom Kelly Drive is named. Jack Kelly, a longtime

city councilman and Vesper officer, lured the nation's best rowers, even

arguing for "special assignment" for Olympic hopefuls in the military.

Who were these men?

Tom and Joe Amlong, a brawny pair of loud-mouthed brothers in their late

20s, one in the Air Force, the other in the Army; Hugh Foley, 20, and

Stan Cwiklinski, 21, quiet, hard-working students at LaSalle College; Bill

Knecht, 34, a father of six with a sheet-metal business; and three men

who had rowed in college - Marine Lt. Emory Clark, 26, and Boyce Budd,

25, (both Yale) and Navy Lt. Bill Stowe, 26, (Cornell).

Their 115-pound cox, Bob Zimonyi, was a 46-year-old Hungarian refugee

who often muttered his commands in his native language.

"A boatload of men will beat a boatload of boys every time," boasted

their diminutive, hard-driving coach, Al Rosenberg, after his "men"

outpaced the "boys" of undefeated Harvard and the University of

California at the trials.

Rosenberg, who died in December, will be missed Saturday<NO1>1-25<NO>,

at a banquet honoring the Vesper Eight and others who competed in the

'64 games. Theirs is an aging fraternity but their stories, to be retold

at the event, are a testimony to the championship spirit that continues

to draw elite rowers to Boathouse Row.

Athletes like Olympic-aspirant Vicky Opitz, 25, who trained at Vesper

before competing in the World Cup last year in Switzerland, where her

eight broke the world record. Her crew then nailed the World

Championship in South Korea.

"Part of my decision to train in Philadelphia," she said last week, "was

its incredible history as a mecca of rowing on the East Coast and the

stories that come out of there of people who are willing to push and

sacrifice to accomplish their goals."

In his diary, Emory Clark wrote of the pain and the joy of training on

the Schuylkill in the winter of 1964:

"You put the boat in and rain goes down your neck, but once you get out

and warmed up it's terrific - even if you are rigged low and you get

hung up every stroke and Al calls you on your release - I enjoyed it out

there tonight - lashing away at the water, cussing Zimonyi and counting

strokes.... Dark when we came in and still nasty. Wonderful. ... Pray

that the warm weather will see an end to our aches and pains."

Fellow rower Bill Stowe, in his 2005 book All Together wrote: "We rowed

six days a week in all kinds of weather, and we killed ourselves. When

we were not rowing, we weightlifted - tortured our bodies. ... We

greeted the sun in the morning and put it to bed in the evening. ... It

was both wonderful and dreadful."

It was nearly nightfall on Oct. 15, 1964, when, in a wind-delayed race,

the Vesper Eight churned its way toward the finish line, still 500

meters away. Suddenly, "there was a bright explosion and another, and I

had something else for my ravaged brain to focus on," Clark wrote.

"Could we have passed the finish line? Had I so miscalculated?"

Under flares bursting to light the way, Vesper streaked across the

finish five seconds ahead of the Germans. The interminable months of

workouts and weights and worry were over in 6 minutes, 18.23 seconds,

clinching gold for the United States and Philadelphia.

Dorothy Brown is a former editor at The Inquirer, and a member of Vesper

who rows only for fun.