Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: What Was the Great Love Story in Your Family Tree?

It's Valentine's Day today, and Randy Seaver has created a challenge related to that for this week's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun.

Come on, everybody, join in and accept the mission and execute it with precision.

1.  It's Valentine's Day — a day for lovers!  We all have hundreds of love stories in our ancestry.

2.  What was the great love story of the ancestors in your family tree?  What wedding had a great story in it?  Choose one ancestral couple.  Share how they met (if known) and when and where they married.  Note how long they were married.  Highlight something that suggests affection or partnership.

3.  Share your great love story in your family tree in your own blog post or in a Facebook, SubStack, BlueSky, or other social media post.  Leave a link to your post on this blog post to help us find your post.

The one great love story that I know about in my family tree is that of my maternal grandparents, Abraham Meckler and Lillyan Gordon.  Bubbie (Yiddish for grandmother) told me they met on September 15, 1937 in Manhattan, but she never told me how they met.  I know they were both living in Brooklyn (half a mile from each other!), so I have no idea what they were doing that day in Manhattan.

They were married October 29, 1939 in The Bronx, even though they lived in Brooklyn.  It was a double wedding with the younger of Lily's two older brothers, Alexander Gordon, who married Roslyn Rubin.  Technically Al and Rose's wedding was recorded as October 28, 1939, so I don't know if they married before midnight and my grandparents married after midnight.  Supposedly there's a Jewish superstition about double weddings, so the dates were recorded as consecutive instead of the same.

I have been told the caterer for the wedding was Abe's older brother Harry's wife Ida Bogus, who worked in catering with her aunt and uncle, Louis Perelmuth and Anna Posner (sister of Ida's mother).  Louis and Anna had a son named Jacob who was a singer, although not famous at the time (he did become famous under the name Jan Peerce).  He sang two songs at the wedding, although Bubbie did not remember what those songs were.  She did remember that the cantor's son sang "Oh Promise Me" and "Because."

Bubbie and Zadie (Yiddish for grandfather) were married for just over fifty years, until Zadie died on December 10, 1989.  Zadie had been ill for several years but held on for the 50th wedding anniversary party, which was held in Las Vegas.  It was a big family reunion, with relatives coming from all over the country.

I always remember Bubbie and Zadie as being very in love with each other.  Among the many things Bubbie told me was that every year while they were married, Zadie gave her a big flowery card for Valentine's Day.  After Zadie passed away, I sent Bubbie cards for Valentine's Day.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Did Your Grandparents Know Their Grandparents?

We have a really fun challenge today for Randy Seaver's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun!

Come on, everybody, join in and accept the mission and execute it with precision.

1.  Marie Cooke Beckman on her blog, MarieB's Genealogy Blog--Southeastern USA, asked and answered this question, and it is right up the SNGF alley:  Did your grandparents know their grandparents?  Thank you for the idea, Marie!

2.  Tell us about your grandparents and their grandparents in your own blog post, in a comment on this post, or in a Facebook post.  Please leave a link on this post if you write your own post.

This is a really cool topic!  I love it!

My maternal grandparents were Abraham Meckler (1912–1989) and Lillyan "Lily" E. Gordon (1919–2006).

• Abraham Meckler's maternal grandparents were Gershon Itzhak Nowicki (c. 1856–1948) and Dube Yelsky (c. 1848–1936).  Gershon and Dube immigrated to the United States in 1922 and lived in Brooklyn.  They changed the spelling of their family name to Novitzky, and Dube used the name Dora.  My grandfather knew both of them.  My maternal uncle Gary Meckler, who was born in 1951, was named after Gershon.

• Abraham's paternal grandparents were Simcha Dovid Mekler and Beila (birth and death years unknown for both).  They both died in Europe, almost definitely before my grandfather was born, and he never met them.

• Lillyan Gordon's maternal grandparents were Mendel Hertz Brainin (c. 1862–1930) and Ruchel Dvojre Jaffe (c. 1868–1934).  The immigrated separately to the United States in 1906 and lived in Manhattan.  They used the secular names Morris/Max and Rachel Dorothy, and my grandmother knew both of them.  She was born in their house.

• Lily's paternal grandparents were Avigdor Gorodetsky (c. 1863–1925) and Esther Leah Schneiderman (c. 1867–1908).  Esther Leah was my grandmother's birth name, following the Ashkenazi tradition of naming after a deceased ancestor (my grandmother changed her name as an adult).  Esther Leah's death was what precipitated the chain migration of this branch of my family to the United States.  Avigdor came in 1914 and changed his name to Victor Gordon.  My grandmother knew him, and I have a big family photo with the two of them in it.

My paternal grandparents were Bertram "Bert" Lynn Sellers, Sr. (1903–1995) and Anna Gauntt (1893–1986).

• Anna Gauntt's maternal grandparents were Frederick Cleworth Dunstan (1840–1873) and Martha Winn (1837–1884).  They both died in England before my grandmother was born, and she never knew them.

• Anna's paternal grandparents were James Gauntt (1831–1899) and Amelia Gibson (c. 1831–1908).  Everyone lived in Mount Holly, New Jersey and the nearby vicinity.  Since Anna was born in 1893 and James died in 1899, there's a reasonable chance she knew him.  Amelia died when my grandmother was 15 years old, so I'm pretty sure she knew her.

• Bertram Sellers' maternal grandparents were Sarah Ann Deacon Lippincott (1860–aft. 1904) and Joel Armstrong (c. 1849–c. 1921).  I don't know if he knew them.  I don't have documented dates of death for either person or confirmation that they were divorced, which I believe to be the case.  I suspect he might have known his grandmother; I'm pretty sure she's in the household with Grandpa's mother in 1900, so his mother was apparently on speaking terms with her mother.  If I have researched the correct person, his grandfather remarried and had a second family, so maybe he didn't know them, but I really don't know.

• Bert's biological paternal grandparents are still unknown to me, as I have not yet determined his biological father.  His adoptive father's parents were Cornelius Godschalk Sellers (1845–1877) and Catherine "Kate" Fox Owen (1849–c. 1923).  As Cornelius died so young, none of his grandchildren knew him.  Kate had a second husband, George W. Moore (1840–1920).  Bert did know Kate, and we have a photo of her.  In fact, she's the person who paid for his father's funeral, as he also died very young.  It's reasonable to believe that Grandpa probably knew George Moore, even though we don't have a photo of him, as Grandpa's brother was named after George.  I was told that Grandpa's father loved his stepfather so much that he named his second son George Moore Sellers after him.  That certainly suggests he was around the family.

And I am proud to say that I didn't need to look up any of the above information except some of the birth and death years.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Share Something Unexpected That You've Found While Researching an Ancestor

As for Randy Seaver's topic for tonight's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun, if a genealogist has never found something unexpected while researching an ancestor, I'd say that genealogist hasn't done enough research.

Come on, everybody, join in and accept the mission and execute it with precision. 

1.  Share something unexpected that you've found while researching an ancestor.

2.  Share about your unexpected something in your own blog post or on your Facebook page.  Be sure to leave a link to your report in a comment on this post.

[Thank you to Linda Stufflebean for suggesting this topic!]

One major fact that I discovered wasn't quite unexpected, so I guess you could say I merely confirmed it.

I was told by my cousin Ruth Anne that the rumor in the family was that my paternal grandparents had never actually been married.  This was strongly supported by a letter she had that was from a lawyer, in response to an inquiry my grandmother (who was also Ruth Anne's grandmother) had sent to him.  It was clear from the letter we had that our grandmother had asked about circumstances relating to a common-law marriage.  Now, that is not something you ask if you know that you signed a marriage license.

But the confirmation that they had not been married came when Ancestry.com added a database of an index to Florida divorces.

I was sitting around in an airport during a layover and discovered the database.  I figured it would be amusing to look up my father's and my grandfather's divorces.  And lo and behold, when my grandfather was divorced in 1953, it was from Elizabeth, his first wife, whom he married in the 1920's — not from Anna, my grandmother.  My father was born in 1935.  Oops!

So I called my father and said, "Guess what?  You're a bastard!"  Which he thought was hilarious.

(And yes, I realize that the possibility exists that my grandfather could have told my grandmother he wasn't married and entered into a bigamous marriage, but they lived in a pretty small town, and I'll bet that my grandmother knew his first wife and knew that he was still married.)

I did discover something unexpected about my great-great-grandfather on my mother's side, however.

I had been told by cousins that my great-great-grandmother had died while the family was still in Europe and that my great-great-grandfather had remarried, which made sense, because they had very young children when she passed away.  It's certainly common for men to do that, so they have a wife to take care of those children.

I found the record for my great-great-grandmother's death on December 8, 1908.  But when I found an index entry for my great-great-grandfather's second marriage, I learned that it had taken place June 8, 1911, two and a half years after my great-great-grandmother had died.

Um, say what?  You mean to tell me that he took care of those babies (including one who was a mere one month old when mom died) all by himself for those years?

So I asked my cousins about this apparent "modern man", taking on the mantle of mother while he was also a businessman.

And learned that no, he had not been the one taking care of the children.  The oldest daughter in the family, who was about 18 when her mother died, was still living at home, and she was the person taking care of those little ones.  My great-great-grandfather only remarried after Etta married and moved out.  While that's not quite what I was told the first time around, it certainly made that second marriage date make much more sense.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Which Family Members Stayed in Contact with Your Family?

Randy Seaver has a very interesting topic for this week's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun.

Come on, everybody, join in and accept the mission and execute it with precision.

1.  Most genealogists try to stay in contact with their aunts, uncles, and cousins.  Who among them made the most effort to stay in contact your family?  Did they write, use the telephone, send cards or gifts?  Did they visit you, and/or did you visit them?

2.  Share your cousin experiences in your own blog post or on your Facebook page.  Be sure to leave a link to your report in a comment on this post.

There was a significant difference in the contact maintained by my mother's side of the family versus my father's.

My siblings and I grew up knowing many of my mother's relatives.  We saw her parents on a regular basis.  We lived in the Los Angeles area and they lived in Las Vegas, which made it easy for visits in either direction.  I don't know when my grandparents moved to Vegas, though, because now that I think about it, they still lived in Florida when I was born.  But not long after that they must have moved, because we saw them a lot while growing up.  When they came to California, they often took us to Disneyland.  My earliest memory is of a train trip to visit them in Vegas when I was about 2 1/2 years old.

My grandparents also visited us while we lived in Australia (this was made affordable by the fact that my uncle was working for National Airlines at the time, and they were able to fly for free).  After they retired, my grandparents moved back to Florida, and when my family returned to the United States we went to Florida, so then we were in the same state, but we were actually farther away from each other than when we lived on the West Coast (Los Angeles to Las Vegas is about 270 miles, but Fort Lauderdale to Niceville is 600 miles!).  But they came for everyone's graduations and may have visited a few other times also.

We regularly received cards for holidays and birthdays, and my grandmother and mother talked on the phone a lot.  After I finished 9th grade, I went to stay with my grandparents in Fort Lauderdale for about a month.  So there was lots of contact between us all the way around.

My mother had two younger brothers.  The older of the two married in 1967 in Coral Gables and their first son was born in Miami in 1971, so I don't think we saw them much, but they had moved to California by 1975, because my other cousin was born in San Jose that year.  But I remember my aunt visiting us in California before we moved to Australia, probably around 1970?  And I went to college in Los Angeles and visited them a lot after I moved back to California.  I know we received cards from them for holidays.  I don't know how much phone calling there was.  But I'd say overall we were in pretty good contact with them also.

The younger of my mother's brothers moved to Las Vegas with my grandparents and graduated high school there, so we must have seen him on visits to Vegas.  I remember him visiting us once while we lived in Pomona, before we moved to Australia.  I don't remember a lot of regular communication with him growing up, but after I moved to Berkeley, California, I saw him semiregularly, because by that time he was living in Reno, Nevada.  Not as close of a relationship as with my other uncle, but there was still regular contact.

My mother also stayed in touch with her uncles and their wives, and I grew up knowing their names, the names of my cousins, everyone's birthdays and wedding anniversaries, and lots of information about the family.  My mother took the three of us kids with her to Florida for her first cousin's wedding in 1969, which must have been an adventure.  I remember bits and pieces of the trip and things that happened during our visit, such as my sister and I getting our hair done for the wedding.  (I still have the widget that was used to make my hair stand up and be poufy.)  Another of my mother's first cousins helped take care of us kids while we were there.

For my grandparents' 50th wedding anniversary in 1989, there was a huge family gathering in Las Vegas (I think it was in October?).  I think the youngest person there was my nephew, who was born in August, so literally a babe in arms.  Probably around 100 or so people came.  We had aunts, uncles, grandaunts and granduncles, cousins of all types.  It was a great family event.

So it's clear that there was lots of contact with relatives on my mother's side of the family.

My father's side?  Not so much.  My father may have loved his relatives, but he wasn't close to them.  I knew about them, because my mother made sure we knew about them all, but for the most part knowing about them was the sum of it.

I remember my paternal grandfather came to visit us in California, I think in Pomona, once.  We might have visited him and his wife in Florida before we moved to Australia?  But I don't remember regular contact with him.  When we moved back to the States, we went to Niceville, Florida and lived near him.  At that point we saw him regularly, because he was in the same city and because he was our introduction to everyone.  But his wife didn't like having us around.

We also saw my aunt, his oldest child, and her family.  I remember one time they visited and had a camper in my grandfather's yard for a while, and we met our cousins.  I don't remember when my aunt moved to Niceville, but it may have been after I moved back to California.

I knew about my other aunt, between the older daughter and my father, but I don't remember meeting her for quite some time.  I don't even remember now when I met her.  It may have been after she moved to Niceville.

I also knew about my youngest aunt, younger than my father, but I didn't meet her until many years later, after I tracked her down so I could return family photos to her.  My father didn't like talking about her until 2005, when she reached out to him.

I did meet my paternal grandmother.  I think it was just once.  I vaguely remember a family visit to her in Florida, so it was probably after we moved back from Australia.  She was living in Jacksonville, I think.  That's about all I remember.  My father told me that she came out to California after I was born and helped my mother for a while, but I obviously don't remember that, and I don't think she was still in California when my brother was born.  (Hey!  Why didn't my father take any photos of us together?!)  But I did used to write to her after that, and I still have her letters from when I started asking about family history.

My father had a much older sister from my grandmother's marriage, prior to her living with my grandfather.  I never met the sister, but I did meet her daughter, my cousin.  I knew she lived in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area, so when I was going to a conference there, I arranged to meet her.  We stayed in touch for quite a while and I visited another couple of times.

My father's aunts and uncle on his father's side?  They were nothing but names.  I didn't even know my grandfather had a brother until the brother died and Grandpa went out of town for the funeral.  I never met that uncle or the older of my grandfather's two younger sisters (Grandpa was the oldest in the family).  I found out the younger of the sisters was still alive from a chance conversation with my aunt and reached out to her by phone.  The next time I was in Florida, I dragged my cousin across the state just so I could meet my grandaunt.

Because I am my mother's daughter when it comes to family.  When I used to travel regularly to conventions and conferences, I would always figure out which relatives were in the area and make efforts to visit.  I met my mother's favorite cousin on a trip that was actually to Milwaukee but had a side visit to Chicago.  I went to Atlanta for a convention and took a short trip to Toccoa (where DeForest Kelley lived at some point in his life!), just so I could meet my father's younger sister.

I stay in touch regularly with my brother, sister, and half-sister.  I even used to write and talk regularly with my half-sister's mother!  (There really should be a term for your parent's spouse from before the relationship that produced you.  Not a stepparent.  Maybe a preparent?)

I also have tried to stay in contact with all of the relatives I have met during my travels.  I used to send out big envelopes to everyone I knew every year for Christmas or Chanukah (depending on which side of the family) with all the updates I had made to the family trees.  Now I'm connected to many of those relatives, and even more I have found, on Facebook and by e-mail.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: A Photo of You with a Grandparent

I really should have more (and probably do), but at least I was able to find one photo for tonight's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun challenge from Randy Seaver!

Here is your assignment, should you decide to accept it (you ARE reading this, so I assume that you really want to play along; cue the Mission:  Impossible! music!):

1.  Do you have a photograph of yourself with one or more of your grandparents?  How about your great-grandparents?  Show us what you have, and tell us your grandparents' names.

2)  Write your own blog post, leave a comment on this post, or write something on Facebook.

As I noted above, I should have more photographs of me with grandparents, but I was able to come up with one because of the recent photo bonanza I received from my sister.

This photo is of (back row) my mother, Myra, and her parents, Lily and Abe, and (front row) me, my sister, and my brother.  It was taken in Australia, probably late 1971 or early 1972.  I'm pretty sure Bubbie and Zadie (Yiddish for grandmother and grandfather) visited us there during summer.

I wish there were a photo of me with a great-grandparent.  The only great-grandparent who was still alive when I was born was Sarah, the mother of my grandmother pictured above.  My mother used to tell me that she took me to Florida when I was just a little bitty baby, and my father even remembered her doing so.  I was my mother's first child, so it makes sense that she wanted to show me off to her parents and grandmother.  But my grandfather, who took photos of so many other family events, somehow missed a photo of four generations of women in the family.  As far as I know, no such photo exists.

Wedding Wednesday

This is a follow-up to my Wedding Wednesday post of October 30, 2019, when I wrote about my maternal grandparnets' wedding of October 29, 1939.  This Friday is the 82nd anniversary of their wedding day.

I mentioned in the earlier post that I had additional photos of the wedding but hadn't been able to find them.  Well, some success!

This is the photo I've shared before, of Abe Meckler and Lily Gordon:

This is of my beautiful grandmother by herself.

And the other photo I found seems to have been taken on a different day.  It is not the same photographer, and my grandmother's hair and make-up are different, but stylistically it's similar.  Maybe it was an engagement photo?  I know those used to be popular.

There is at least one more photo out there related to the wedding.  The other one I remember is of my grandmother and her sister-in-law, because it was a double wedding (even if they fudged it a little), both in their wedding dresses.  It should be here somewhere!

And maybe one day I will learn why the wedding was in the Bronx, even though everyone lived in Brooklyn.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Your Junior High School (or Middle School) Memories

It's time to think of school days for this week's challenge on Randy Seaver's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun!

Here is your assignment, if you choose to play along (cue the Mission:  Impossible! music):

(1) Do you have memories of your junior high school (or mddle school) years?  Please share several of them.

(2) Tell us in your own blog post, in a comment to this blog post, or on Facebook.  Be sure to leave a comment with a link to your blog post on this post.

Okay, here's mine!

Junior high school holds a special place in my heart because it was the first time I stayed in the same school start to finish.  I attended all three complete years — 7th, 8th, and 9th grades, 1973–1976 — at C. W. Ruckel Junior High School in Niceville, Florida.

I rode the bus to school most of the time.  It was a 10-mile trip from Villa Tasso to Niceville.  Sometimes during the winter it was too cold (dipping below freezing) or too flooded from rain (washing out the "streets") for my brother and me to walk to the bus stop.  Then my mother would drive us in, or we would go in with a neighbor if the water levels were too high for my mother's Corvair.  Water coming up through the floorboards was never a good sign.

I took advanced classes all through junior high school.  For my first year, my 6th-grade teacher registered me for them, leaving one class period for me to choose my own elective, and I continued with them for the following two years.  The advanced classes were math, English, science, history, and probably something else.  I think I took chorus all three years.  I started Spanish classes in junior high school, with Mrs. Lourdes Adams.  Mrs. Arpke was my English teacher.  (Wow, I dragged those names out of my memory!)  I did well in all of my classes.  I probably still have most of my report cards, although they're buried in storage.

I didn't socialize much, partly because of living 10 miles out of town and partly because I wasn't in any of the social cliques.  I was tall, skinny, gangly, unattractive, too smart, and still pretty new to the area.  My only friends were other students in the advanced classes.  My best friend was Eileen.  We met in 8th grade and have stayed friends since, even with each of our moves to various parts of the United States and around the world.  I just visited her last week.

I did not particiate in extracurricular school activities.  My mother often picked us up after school because she was usually in town by that point.  We might run errands with her before heading home and doing homework.

I helped my brother with sorting baseball cards every time he got a new (to him) bunch of cards.  I practiced piano at home and sewed clothing for my dolls.  I don't remember hobbies beyond that.

I participated in Girl Scouts, as a Junior Girl Scout.  At the end of 9th grade, we had a big trip to Atlanta.  The chaperone who drove the car I was in got lost in the city and freaked out because we ended up in the black section of town.  I was the only one who could read a  map, and I got us to the hotel.  We visited Underground Atlanta and Stone Mountain.  I'm sure we visited more sites than that, but those are the ones I remember.

As my 9th grade graduation present, I spent several weeks, maybe a month?, with my grandparents in southern Florida.  They lived in a retirement community, so there weren't kids of my age around.  I hung out in the sun and got sunburnt but had a great time visiting with them.  It was the first time I flew by myself.

Sin City in My Blood

Credit: Thomas Wolfe, www.foto-tw.de
Photo has been cropped.

According to the City of Las Vegas online site, Las Vegas, Nevada is 110 years old today, having been incorporated as a city on June 1, 1911.  I love Vegas and have a long family history with it.

I was born in Los Angeles in April 1962.  I don't believe my maternal grandparents were in Las Vegas yet, because they were defiintely still living in Miami when my parents arrived in Los Angeles (having driven across the country very soon after they were married on October 21, 1961; my mother always complained that it took three whole days to drive through Texas), mostly likely in November.  In fact, when my parents left Florida, my grandmother didn't even know yet that my mother was pregnant with me!  The first person to learn about that was the woman who would become my godmother, Ruthie Cochran, who was my grandmother's oldest friend.  My mother told me that Ruthie was the first person she told about being pregnant.

When they arrived in the Los Angeles area, my parents were broke and my father didn't have a job.  So they did what lots of people in similar circumstances do:  They found a relative or close friend to stay with.  That was Ruthie, who lived in Whittier at the time.  So that's how Ruthie became the first person — besides my father and mother — to learn my mother was pregnant.

I'm pretty sure that very soon after that my grandparents learned about the upcoming happy event.  I suspect that one of the reasons, if not the primary reason, they moved west was because of that announcement.  What I know for certain is that my earliest memory is of taking a train to Las Vegas to visit my grandparents when I was about 2 1/2 years old, so roughly late 1964.  It had to have been after June 16, because my younger sister had been born.  That might even have been the reason for the trip, for my grandmother to see the new baby.

After my grandparents moved to Vegas, we visited them a lot.  My grandmother, Bubbie (Yiddish for grandmother), worked in the casinos as a cashier, and I remember as a child walking through the casinos with her and my parents.  Nowadays they have fits if that happens, but it was just normal stuff back in the 1960's.  Somehow I didn't turn into a gambling addict, either.

Something that influenced me later in life was visiting the Tropicana, one of the classic Vegas casinos.  I fell in love with the gorgeous macaws and cockatoos who lined the long corridor that went from the casino in the front of the propety to the hotel rooms at the rear.  And now I have three macaws!

I remember Bubbie telling me when I was very young that you should only gamble what you can afford to lose.  I asked her about that years later, and she swore she didn't say it, but if it wasn't her I don't know who did.  I took the advice to heart, whoever said it to me.

Bubbie wasn't big into gambling herself, but she did like to play the slots occasionally.  She would walk down an aisle and then decide *that* one looked good.  Once she won $40 on a penny slot playing with only 7 cents.  She just had a knack with slots.  Does Vegas even have penny slots anymore?

For some time Bubbie worked at the Thunderbird, which became the Silver Bird when Major Riddle leased it (he liked naming his casinos Silver Something).  Once when we visited I remember we had French toast made with huge, deep slices of Texas toast, behind the scenes in the hotel kitchen.

Later Bubbie worked at the MGM Grand (the *real* MGM casino) on the Strip.  She was there in November 1980 when the MGM had a huge fire.  She and her coworkers made it out fine, but then one young woman went back in because she forgot her brand-new coat.  She didn't make it back out the second time.  Even now I don't like being on high floors in hotels, just in case.

On one visit to Vegas I went with Bubbie and someone else, I think my mother or my godmother?, to the Silver Slipper (owned by Howard Hughes, not by Major Riddle) to see the famous Boylesque female impersonator show.  I thought it was in 1989, when we had a big family reunion in Vegas to celebrate my grandparents' 50th wedding anniversary, but according to Wikipeida the Silver Slipper closed permanently in 1988, so that timing is a little off.  But I know I saw the show!

Before I started college in 1979 I lived in Las Vegas with my grandparents.  Their apartment building was just behind the Imperial Palace, on the Strip.  During that stay, my grandfather wanted to teach me how to bet on craps.  When I discovered that you make money on craps by betting on the player, not by playing yourself, I lost interest.  I attended a couple of hours of the Jerry Lewis–Muscular Dystrophy Labor Day Telethon while I was living there.

Several years later, after I had moved to Oakland, California, I was visiting Las Vegas annually because I regularly attended a trade show held there.  After being at a couple of other hotels, it ended up at The Orleans, about a mile west of the Strip and a very nice hotel.  Not only did I enjoy going to the trade show and seeing Vegas, I also visited my grandaunt Florence every time I was in town.  I think I did that for about ten years or so.  Florence and I would always go out to a buffet, and she would tuck a bread roll or two and some napkins into her purse before we left.

One tradition I built during those trade show years was going to the fantastic sushi restaurant in the San Remo (apparently more properly Hôtel San Rémo), just behind the Tropicana.  An industry colleague and I alternated paying to take the other out, because we both loved great sushi.  I had been told that the casino was marketed heavily to Japanese businessmen, explaining the high quality of the restaurant, and I learned from the Wikipedia page that it was indeed owned by a Japanese hotelier from 1989–2006, which fits with the years I was visiting.

And now that I've done all this reminiscing about Las Vegas, I want to go!  But it doesn't look as though the Oyo (current name for the San Remo property) still has the great sushi restaurant.  Well, foo.

Lily and Abe: A Love Story

Lily and Abe were my maternal grandparents, Lillyan E. Gordon and Abe Meckler.  I knew them as Bubbie and Zadie, Yiddish for grandmother and grandfather.

Lily was born Esther Lillian Gordon on March 6, 1919 at 1575 Madison Avenue, Manhattan, New York.  Her parents were Joe Gordon and Sarah Libby Brainin.

Abe was born Abram Meckler (I think) on July 23, 1912 in Brooklyn, Kings County, New York.  His parents were Morris Meckler and Minnie Zelda Nowicki.

Bubbie lived in Manhattan until shortly before 1930, when her family was enumerated in Baltimore, Maryland.  In 1940, her parents were enumerated in Brooklyn at 231 Livonia Avenue, and the census taker indicated that they were living in the same house in 1935, so sometime between 1930 and 1935 they moved there.

As far as I know, Zadie lived in Brooklyn from birth through to when he and Bubbie left New York and moved to Florida in the 1940's.  In 1930 he was at 420 Junius Street with his parents.  I have not yet found his father in the 1940 census (his mother died in 1936) so don't have a possible address for 1935, assuming he was living with his father at that time.

I don't know how my grandparents met.  Bubbie told me that they met on September 15, 1937 in Manhattan but didn't give me more details.  So they were both living in Brooklyn but met in Manhattan.  In 1940 they were at 484 Livonia Avenue, Brooklyn, only a couple of blocks from her parents.  The census shows that both were living in Brooklyn in 1935.

Bubbie and Zadie were married October 29, 1939, not in Brooklyn, not in Manhattan, but in The Bronx.  It was a double wedding, of sorts.  Bubbie's older brother, Alexander "Al" Gordon, and Roslyn "Rose" Rubin were married on October 28.  I was told that Jews are not supposed to have double weddings and so Al, being older, was married first and then Bubbie and Zadie were married.  Because the dates that I was told are from the civil calendar, that would suggest that Al and Rose were married just before midnight, and Bubbie and Zadie just after.  But Judaism uses sunset as the divider between days, which could mean that sunset was the breakpoint between the two, and perhaps the consecutive secular dates were used on the marriage returns for convenience.  I probably won't find an answer to that question, or why they were married in The Bronx, now that all four of them have passed away.

Right now I can't find the name of the rabbi who performed the marriages, but I do know that Jan Peerce, the well known Metropolitan tenor, sang two songs, because Bubbie suddenly blurted that out one day.  She couldn't remember what he sang but did recall that the cantor's son sang "Because" (maybe this one) and "Oh Promise Me."

Bubbie and Zadie were in love with each other for their entire lives.  They were always so good to each other and went everywhere together.  For each of the 50 years that they were married, Zadie gave Bubbie a big, flowery Valentine's Day card.  Bubbie used to call Zadie her "little man" because she was taller than he was.

Zadie was ill for the last years of his life but lived long enough to attend the big 50th wedding anniversary party that their three children coordinated for them.  It was held in Las Vegas, and lots of my aunts, uncles, cousins, and other relatives came.  I think Zadie really wanted to go to the anniversary and held on so he could.  He died shortly after it took place.  Bubbie missed him so much after he was gone.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: What Do You Take after from Your Parents and Grandparents?

Get ready to dissect yourself for this week's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun from Randy Seaver!

Here is your assignment, should you decide to accept it (you ARE reading this, so I assume that you really want to play along; cue the Mission:  Impossible! music!):

(1) What do you "take after" or "favor" from your parents and/or grandparents?  It could be looks, traits, mannerisms, speech, etc.

(2) Put it in your own blog post, in a comment to this post, or in a Facebook post.  Please leave a link in a comment to this post.

My thanks to reader Liz Tapley for suggesting this topic.

Physical Traits and Size

• My brown hair and eyes are from my father.  When I was young he taught me that brown eyes meant I was "full of it up to there."

• My very, very fair skin that can turn red in just five minutes out in the sun is definitely from my mother.  She told me once that she had gotten skin cancer when she was young, so I've always been a little paranoid about that.

• My "robust" chest certainly didn't come from my mother (who used to call herself the president of the Itty Bitty Titty Committee).  I can probably credit either of my grandmothers for that.

• My height also didn't come from my mother, who was barely 5'2" ("eyes of blue, oh, what those five foot could do").  My father was 6'1" in his prime, so at 5'8" I guess I'm right in the middle.  I'm giving the credit to my father, especially since I would have been taller without the scoliosis and curvature.

• I have my father to thank for my big feet, also.  Not many people my height wear size 12 women's/10 men's shoes, another indication I really should been have taller.  My hands are really big for my height, too.

• My voice is all my mother's.  I sound a lot like her, so much so that when she passed away my stepfather had trouble listening to me talk on the phone for quite some time.

• I used to have a very large mole on my back, which my mother told me was the "Brainin family mole."  According to her, each Brainin family member and descendant had a mole right around the same place on the back.  Mine supposedly was the largest.  Was, because when it began to cause me pain, I saw a dermatologist who excised it and did a biopsy on it to make sure everything was okay.  It was okay, but now I have a scar instead of the mole.

• When I was younger, my mother told me at one point that her father had had flat feet and that's why he was unable to serve in the Army during World War II.  So I guess I have him to thank for my flat feet.

• I'm a lifelong klutz, which my mother said also came from her.

• Who do I look like?  Definitely my sister and half-sister (who also has brown hair, thanks to our mutual father but probably also to her mother).  (I also used to resemble my stepsister, which was kind of weird.)  When I was only with my mother, though, people knew immediately that we were related, so I must resemble her to some degree.  And when our whole family (father, mother, me, brother, sister) was together, everyone knew we were related, so that's another indication of resemblance.  When I met my half-first cousin once removed (the son of my father's niece through his half-sister; my family is really complicated), he immediately thought I looked like my paternal grandmother (his great-grandmother).  His mother thought he focused on that because he had been raised by my grandmother (which is a long story).  But I was told that when I was a baby, others also saw a strong resemblance to my grandmother

Mannerisms and Other Traits

• Along with sounding like my mother, I also talk a lot like her.  I used to pick up her New York City/Boston accent, and I use a lot of her phrases.  At times when I say something I can hear her voice in my head.

• I can credit both of my parents for my intelligence and curiosity.  They were both intelligent and encouraged me (particularly my mother) to think about and explore things.  I think my mother later came to regret that.

• My love for sports also comes from both my parents, who watched all sorts of sports on TV all the time.  My favorite is still football.  Now, my mother would watch golf and boxing, but I have my limits.

• Daddy gave me my love of cars and motorcycles, and transportation in general.  I used to hang over the engine compartment with him while he was working on a car.  I knew the engine parts and all the tools, and would run to get tools when he needed them.

• My ability in music comes from my father.  He was very talented, played piano and guitar, and competed on Ted Mack's Amateur Hour with a swing band when he was about 17 (with his group losing to a young Gladys Knight, in her first televised appearance).  Who knows, if he hadn't been lazy, he might have made a career out of music, and I wouldn't be here.

• My mother gave me a deep love of language.  She liked to play word games, such as creating "Spoonerisms" such as "chu blip stamps" (Blue Chip stamps) and "chotato pips" (potato chips) and talking about the "oneth of the month" (first day of the month).  She got me hooked on crossword puzzles, which I still enjoy.  And she sparked my interest in foreign languages.

• Even now, my handwriting strongly resembles my mother's, which resembled her mother's.  So there we have a three-generational thing going.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Where Were Your Ancestors 80 Years Ago?

It's time to look at the 1940 census for Saturday Night Genealogy Fun with Randy Seaver!

Here is your assignment, if you choose to play along (cue the Mission:  Impossible! music, please!):

(1) Determine where your ancestral families were on 1 April 1940, 80 years ago, when the U.S. census was taken.

(2) List them, their family members, their birth years, and their residence locations (as close as possible).  Do you have photographs of their residences from about that time, and do the residences still exist?

(3) Tell us all about it in your own blog post, in a comment to this post, or in a Facebook Status post.

I actually had several ancestors alive in 1940 (not "direct ancestors", because that's a nonsense term; someone is either an ancestor or a collateral relative).

• My father, Bertram Lynn Sellers, Jr. (born 1935), and my paternal grandparents, Bertram Lynn Sellers, Sr. (born 1903) and Anna Gauntt (born 1893), were living either in New Jersey or in NewYork.  I have looked up, down, and sideways for them in the 1940 census and have not found them.  At this point I don't expect to, because when my grandfather compiled a list of all the places he had lived during his life, he included three(!) locations for 1940.  I'm pretty sure they simply were missed by census takers.

• My paternal grandfather's mother, my great-grandmother Laura May (Armstrong) Sellers Ireland (later called Nanny Ireland; born 1882), was also not enumerated in the 1940 census.  I know the address at which she was living on Broad Street in Mount Holly, Burlington County, New Jersey, but that house number was missed by the census taker.  It does not appear in the enumeration district.  I have a photo of the house, though, which was owned by family members for at least 40 years.

• My paternal grandmother's parents, my great-grandparents Thomas Kirkland Gauntt (born 1870) and Jane (Dunstan) Gauntt (born 1872), were living at 119 Hume Street, Mount Holly Township, Burlington County, New Jersey.  I not only don't have a photo of the house, I can't find the address on Google Maps, so the street name might have changed.

• My maternal grandparents, Abraham Meckler (born 1912) and Lillian Esther (Gordon) Meckler (born 1919), were living at 484 Livonia Avenue, Brooklyn, Kings County, New York.  My mother was there also, in a way, because my grandmother was pregnant with her when the census was taken.  I don't have a photo of the building from that time, and a quick peek at Google Maps shows a pretty modern-looking building, but I might be able to get a photo by paying New York City.

• My maternal grandfather's father, my great-grandfather Morris Meckler (born about 1862), should be in Brooklyn, but I haven't found him yet.  I really want to find him in 1940 because I have been told that he married a second time after my great-grandmother Minnie Zelda (Nowicki) Meckler died in 1936.  If he actually did, that second wife might be enumerated with him.  I know he was alive in 1940 because he didn't die until 1953.

• I might have found Minnie's father, my great-great-grandfather Gershon Itzhak Novitsky (born about 1858), also in Brooklyn, at 99 44th Street.  I think it's him, even though the person is enumerated as Jean, not Gershon, because the age and birth location are right, and he is enumerated with a wife named Ethel.  If this is the correct couple, that Ethel is Ethel (Nowicki) Perlman (botn about 1868), who was Gershon's niece.  I was told many years ago that Gershon had married his niece later in life.  Apparently, it was not uncommon in some Jewish communities for an older man who was widowed to marry a niece.  This wasn't necessarily a fully "active" (ahem!) marriage; the reason for it was for the elderly widower to have someone to take care of him.  I have a second one of these uncle/niece marriages in my family.  I don't have a photo of this residence, and Google Maps shows me a modern concrete building, so that ain't it.  This is another location that I might be able to obtain a photo through New York City.

• My maternal grandmother's parents, my great-grandparents Joe Gordon (born about 1892) and Sarah Libby (Brainin) Gordon (born about 1885), were living at 10 Livonia Avenue, Brooklyn, Kings County, New York, just a few blocks from my grandparents.  Also living with them was their oldest child, Sidney Gordon (born 1915).  I don't have a photo, and when I look for that addresss on Google Maps, I can't even tell what the building looks like, because it's covered with scaffolding.  Yet another location that I might be able to get a photo from New York City.

So I have a total of twelve ancestors who were alive in 1940, seven of whom I have found in the 1940 census.  Four of the remaining ancestors I have conceded that I will never find.  The only one left after that is Morris Meckler; I haven't given up on finding him — someday.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Moving On Out

It's Saturday, so that must mean it's time for Randy Seaver's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun.  Let's see what tonight's theme is:

Here is your assignment, if you choose to play along (cue the Mission:  Impossible! music, please!):

1.  Where did you go the first time you moved out of your parents' home?  Did you have roommates? Did you live by yourself?  Did you get married right away?  Tell the story — your children and grandchildren will want to know!

2.  Share your story in your own blog post, in a comment on this post, or on Facebook.  Please leave a comment with a link to your post here.

The first time I moved out of my parents' home was when I was getting ready to go to college in 1979.  But instead of going straight to college, I lived with my grandparnents in Las Vegas during the summer.

I don't remember now why that decision was made.  It could have been my desire to get the hell out of Florida during the summer.  My grandparents might have offered to have me visit.  I'm pretty sure, however, that it wasn't my mother's idea, because she didn't want me going to the other side of the country at all.

We made a big trip out of it.  I packed all the clothes I thought I would need for the school year.  My mother and I flew to the San Francisco Bay area first and visited my aunt and uncle (my mother's brother and his wife).  I think we stayed about a week or so and did a bunch of touristy things.  One place we visited was Pier 39, where we ran into one of those age and weight guessers.  I decided to take her on.  She went on about how "the eyes are the windows to the soul" and would let her know how old I was.  She finally wrapped up her shpiel by saying I was 27.  I told her that I was only 17, and it really seemed to throw her off.  She was very disconcerted.  I offered to show her my driver license, but she said it was okay, she believed me.  I don't remember what I won for stumping her.

After that visit, Mommy and I flew down to Los Angeles for my USC freshman orientation, which was a few days or so.  Walk around the campus, kind of figure out where things are, see the dorm.  Get blown off by the advisor in my academic department (yeah, I still remember that).  Nothing exciting.

Then we flew to Vegas, where I stayed and my mother then went back to Florida.  I don't remember if I had my own room or if I slept on a couch, but I had a lovely time staying with my grandparents, except for when my grandfather would kvetch that I wasn't getting enough exercise.  He kept telling me I should go out for a walk, so one day I did.  I walked around in 107° and came back after an hour, long enough for him to be worried.  He didn't complain about me not exercising after that.

I was still living with them when the annual Jerry Lewis–Muscular Dystrophy Association Labor Day Telethon was being broadcast.  Zadie (my grandfather) asked if I wanted to see the telethon in person, which I thought sounded fun, so we went to the Sahara Casino, where it was held, and watched for a couple of hours.  Then they shifted another audience group in.  The main thing I remember from that year's telethon is that Charo was a guest and was dancing with a just-barely-large-enough-to-completely-cover-everything tube top that then started sliding down bit by bit.  The cameras cut back and forth between Charo dancing and Jerry sitting off to the side sweating while he worried if the dancing would end before the top fell.  (It did.)

Before the fall semester started, my grandparents loaded me, my clothes, and a bicycle Zadie had found for me into the car and drove to Los Angeles.  They helped me get set up in my dorm room and headed back to Vegas.  And I've always found my own place to live since then.

Wedding Wednesday

My maternal grandparents, Abe (Jewish name Avram) Meckler and Esther Leah Gordon (known as Lily), were married October 29, 1939, in The Bronx, Bronx County, New York.  Yesterday was the 80th anniversary of their marriage.

The marriage lasted 50 years, ending with the death of my grandfather.  He had been ill for some time but held on long enough for the big 50th anniversary party that was held in Las Vegas in 1989.  So many of my relatives came!  Zadie (Yiddish for grandfather) died in December.

Fifty years is a good long marriage.  Just out of curiosity, I looked up "longest marriage" and found that a Sikh couple in India had been married 90 years.  That's nothing short of amazing.

My grandparents had a double wedding with my grandmother's older brother, Al.  Alexander Gordon married Roslyn (Rose) Rubin on October 28.  I have been told that Jews aren't supposed to do double weddings (don't know if it's actually true), so Al and Rose were married just before the end of the 28th and my grandparents right after the beginning of the 29th.  I was told the changing point was midnight, but that would have made for a very long night.  On top of that, by the Jewish calendar, the day changes at sunset, so maybe it was actually earlier in the day.  I don't think I have a copy of Al and Rose's marriage certificate, so I probably need to get that to check on the story, don't I?

In 1999, when Bubbie (Yiddish for grandmother) and I were visiting my grandfather's cousin Mort, Mort showed us a basic family tree that he had put together.  He told us that the family name of Perlman had originally been Perlmutter.  I made a somewhat cynical observation that there must be a family story that they were related to the famous operatic tenor Jan Peerce, whose original name was Perelmuth (a spelling variation), and Mort said yes, indeed, that they were.  Suddenly Bubbie popped up and said, "He sang at my wedding."  We both stared at her and said, "What??"  See, Jan Peerce was already very famous by 1939, and my grandparents, although I loved them dearly, weren't anything special in New York City society.  So why would the great Jan Peerce be singing at their wedding?

And my grandmother explained that Zadie's brother Harry was married to Jan Peerce's cousin and that the two families were in a catering business together.   So we had a connection.  Maybe Harry asked his wife if she could get her famous cousin to sing at his brother's wedding?  Bubbie couldn't remember the two songs the famous opera singer sang, but she did remember what the cantor's son sang:  "Oh Promise Me" and "Because" (perhaps this one).  (But here's a recording of Peerce singing "Oh Promise Me.")

I have put a little effort into trying to verify the story but haven't gotten anywhere.  I believe I checked the New York Times and didn't find anything.  I suspect that if Jan Peerce was there the wedding would have been written up in one of the many Yiddish neighborhood newspapers that existed in New York City at that time.  Alas, I don't read Yiddish, and none of those newspapers is indexed, much less in English.  But some day I will figure it out.

I have two more photographs from the wedding, which I can't currently find due to too many boxes still unpacked after my move two years ago.  One is of my grandmother alone, and the other is of her and Rose together.  Surprsingly, I don't think I have any photo of Al from the wedding.  I should get in touch with Al and Rose's daughter and rectify that.  And maybe she also has heard the story about Jan Peerce singing at the wedding.  At least that would be more support for it being true.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: What Is Your Earliest Memory?

This is really cool.  Randy Seaver decided he liked one of my suggestions for a Saturday Night Genealogy Fun topic:

Here is your assignment, if you choose to play along (cue the Mission:  Impossible! music, please!):

(1) What is your earliest memory?  How old were you, where did you live, who are the characters in your memory?

(2) Tell us in your own blog post, in a comment to this post, or on Facebook or Google+.  Please leave a comment on this post with a link to your post.

Thank you to Janice Sellers for suggesting this topic.  If you have an idea for an SNGF topic, please let me know.

Part of the reason I suggested this topic is because of the very clear early memory I have.

As a child, for many years I had remembered taking a train trip from Los Angeles (really east Los Angeles County) to Las Vegas to visit my grandparents.  I remembered my mother and her sister being on the train, and clearly remembered throwing up and my mother being upset about the mess.  I didn't remember leaving Los Angeles or arriving in Las Vegas, just the part when I threw up, who was there, and where we were going.

I finally asked my mother about me throwing up on the train and whether she remembered it, and if so when it had happened.  She looked stunned and said I couldn't possibly remember that.  I added the details about us traveling to Vegas and Aunt Sam being with us.  My mother looked utterly flabbergasted.  She told me I was remembering it correctly, and that it had happened when I was only two and half years old.  She could not fathom that I remembered that trip.  I guess, in my mind, it was such a traumatic event to throw up on the train that the memory imprinted itself permanently in my brain.

At the time we were living in eastern Los Angeles County.  If I was 2 1/2, and my sister was already born, we were probably living in La Puente.  I can kind of picture the house in my mind, but I don't think we have any photographs of it.  It's the house where I remember seeing a swarm of bees when I was a little older.  Before La Puente we lived in Montebello, and after La Puente I think is when we moved to Pomona.

What I found interesting was what I didn't remember about the trip.  Apparently my brother (one year younger than I) and sister (two years younger) were also on the train with us, but I have no recollection of them being there.  In fact, now that I think about it, we were probably going to visit my grandparents so they could see the new baby.

Wordless Wednesday

Wordless Wednesday