Spring and summer are usually wedding time. Although COVID-19 has altered many wedding plans, I believe we should still celebrate weddings. About once a week I see photos on Facebook of an outdoor wedding in a backyard or a park, where a small group of people gather for a family wedding. Other weddings, I know, have been put on hold. But with all that going on, weddings are on my mind.
In June I wrote about finding my in-laws wedding album during our move. Among the other items I discovered in my move, was a wedding memory book that my Mother filled out after she and Dad were engaged. Funny how you grow up hearing family stories, but some important facts were left out. Those facts are chronicled in this memory book.
For example, I knew my parents met on a blind date set up by my Dad’s Aunt Hady and Uncle Lenny. They shopped at my grandparent’s bakery and liked my Mom. So they arranged for their nephew, my Dad, to meet Mom. I guess she liked him, because she loaned him the book, Animal Farm, and he had to come for a second date to return it.
What I now know is that first date was held on July 4, 1949. Dad always said how difficult it was to go from the Bronx to West New York, New Jersey. Now I truly believe him. It was a holiday. It must have been nuts using mass transit to go on a date.
But Mom must have liked the date. She remembered: “We went to the Roxy and then to Roth’s for supper. I wore my black silk print and Don wore a tan sport jacket with dark brown pants.” Can you imagine a blind date now on the Fourth of July with the man wearing a sport jacket and the woman wearing silk? It would be perhaps a summer dress and the guy would wear nice slacks or shorts and a polo shirt. I think.
Mom was still in college. They were both 20 years old on their first date.
They announced their engagement 19 months later on March 23, 1951, in Santa Barbara, California. Amazingly they married just three months later. I knew it was a quickly planned wedding. But I did not realize how quickly!
I never knew the exact date of their engagement. But it answers a question I always had. I got married on March 22, a Saturday night. But my Mom pushed for a while for a Sunday afternoon wedding on March 23, which would have been the anniversary of their engagement! I am sorry I did not ask her why that date was so important. I will just believe that March 22 still counts!
The story of their engagement I had heard many times. Mom and my Grandma Esther, my Dad’s mom, flew to California where my Dad was in basic training before going to Korea. My Mom’s parents were extremely upset and worried that they would get married there. In fact, there is a photo of my parents by the courthouse in Santa Barbara that created a stir. But no, they did not get married then. They waited till Mom graduated college and Dad had a two-week furlough before going off to war.
They even got a few engagement gifts, mainly from close family.
My Mom even had a surprise shower on May 27, 1951. I have photos and even a movie of the shower. Dad was still in California. I assume my uncle recorded the shower. My Dad’s sister, Leona, and sister-in-law, Mickey, hosted the shower at my paternal grandparent’s apartment, for 50 guests! My Great Aunt Minnie, who was part of my childhood and even came to my wedding, gave my Mom the bridal book, I am looking at now.
But the memory book had another surprise that was important in my genealogy research. I knew almost all the people at the shower. A few I know basically who they are, but do not remember them. And a few were a bit of a surprise, they are my grandmother’s first cousins and aunts for the Lew family. (See blog below.) These women have shown up in my genealogy research before. It was actually these names in reference to my great grandmother that confirmed that my great grandmother was in fact from the same family in Russia as other members of the Tracing the Tribe Group I belong to. And connected me with distant relatives here in Kansas. This wedding memory book makes the relationship very clear. It states, “Aunt Rose, Grandma’s sister”. With this shower list, I am able to realize how closely in contact the family was in the 1950s.
Of the 50 people at that shower, I only know of three still alive today. My Aunt Mickey, who hosted it; and my Mom’s two best friends Wini and Judy.
My parents married on June 17, 1951 at Talmud Torah in West New York. My Dad’s sister was the maid of honor. My Mom’s brother was the best man. My Mom wore my Aunt’s wedding dress. As this was a quickly planned wedding, there was no time to order a wedding dress. And my aunt, the maid of honor, wore the gown my Mom wore when she was in the bridal party of her brother’s wedding! Sixty-seven years later, my niece married her husband on the same day.
I even have the list of everyone who attended the wedding. Sadly, as was the time, everyone is listed as Mr. and Mrs., so I do not have many names of the women who were there, unless they were single and came by themselves. But many of the names I know. Many are family members. Many are people I knew throughout my life.
Those first cousins of my grandmother, who came to the shower, were also at the wedding with their spouses. I met them a few times as a child and quickly forgot, as children will do. But I know I met them, as my grandmother’s family had a Cousins’ Club for many years. And I remember going and running around with lots of children in a big room. But like many children, my memory of the adults has slipped away.
After the wedding, my parents went on their honeymoon to New York City, spending two nights at the Waldorf Astoria! They then went to the Catskills and spent five nights at Grossingers! A true destination spot for honeymoons.
My grandparents owned a small bungalow colony in the Catskills. My Dad always joked that his in laws came to be with him on his honeymoon. And they did. They had dinner with them one night. And with that dinner, my Dad had a funny story to tell for the rest of his life.
This tradition continued when my daughter and her husband got married. She wanted to show her husband our Catskills’ home. So they spent three nights of their honeymoon at our home in Kauneonga Lake. My sister went with them, as my daughter had never been there alone as an adult and did not really know her way around. But I like to tease my sister that she was continuing a family tradition. (My daughter also got married on the anniversary of my husband and my first date.)
I am so glad my Mom kept records of everything in her beautiful and precise handwriting. Reading through this book brought back stories and memories. And brought back the joy of the wedding season that we are all missing.
https://zicharonot.com/2016/09/10/a-kansas-wedding-with-a-catskills-honeymoon/
https://zicharonot.com/2019/12/19/the-descendants-of-esther-lew-and-victor-avigdor-wolff-wolf/
zicharonot 