Monthly Archives: October 2023

My Unforgettable Halloween

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This story was written by my mother, Frances Cohen, in October 2010. What better day to publish than on Halloween!

By 1958, Bill and I were settled with our four children in our home in Keeseville.

Bill was very civic minded and president of the town’s Chamber of Commerce. That spring, he received a letter from a young optometrist who had just completed his time in the military. Dr. Jerome Resnick was interested in opening a practice in upstate New York and wanted to know what Keeseville had to offer.

Bill immediately wrote back a glowing letter about our small town. He stated that people in surrounding communities liked to shop in Keeseville as it was a thriving community with many retail stores and a large factory that manufactured television cabinets. Many doctors had practices in Keeseville, but there were no other eye doctors. Bill also said that Dr. Resnick would love living in Keeseville’s location. It was on beautiful Lake Champlain with its opportunities for boating, fishing, and swimming. There were three golf courses nearby, and if the doctor liked to ski, Lake Placid and Whiteface Mountain were less than an hour away. “Most importantly,” Bill stated, “half the population of Keeseville wore glasses and the other half needed them.” Bill ended the letter with an invitation for Dr. Resnick to visit Keeseville and stay as a guest of the chamber in a local hotel so the young doctor could learn more about the community.

Two weeks later, Dr. Resnick arrived, and as promised, Bill and other members of the chamber showed him around. The young doctor was impressed and asked if office space was available. Only one store on the main street of town was available to be converted into an office, but Bill gave him the name of a reasonable contractor. By the end of the summer, with Bill commandeering the construction, the office was completed, and Dr. Resnick was settled in an apartment and was ready for his new patients.

By this time, “Jerry” was a friend of the family. During one of his visits to our house, Jerry confided in us that his parents, who were from the New York City area, were very unhappy about his move to what they considered a small hick town in upstate New York. Jerry was encouraging them to come for a visit and see for themselves that he was happy, business was good, and the people in Keeseville, especially the Cohens, were wonderful, friendly, refined people.

Fall came, and with it came an invitation for Bill and me to attend a Halloween costume party at friends’ house the Saturday before October 31. Since parking was difficult at the hosts’ house, Bill and I arranged for neighbors to pick us up at 6:45 p.m.Everyone, including Bill and I, invited tothe party really enjoyed putting together the outfits for the costume party. The night of the party, the two of us were upstairs in our bedroom getting into our costumes. I had chosen to dress as Sadie Thompson, a “lady of the night,” who was a main character in a popular movie of the day. I was garbed in a very tight, low-cut sweater and a very short skirt. My hair was heavily teased, and I wore tons of eye make-up and lots of cheap jewelry. Bill was dressed as a hobo complete with size 52 pants tied with a rope, a ratty shirt covered with patches, a wig with a huge bald spot surrounded by lots of orange hair, and a clown nose that honked. An empty rum bottle finished the look.

At quarter of seven, our children called up to tell us that someone was at the door. Thinking it was our neighbors, we decided to make a grand entrance. I sashayed down the stairs, swinging my hips and twirling my pocketbook to beat the band. Bill stumbled behind me, taking swigs of his “rum” and honking his nose.

When we got to the bottom of the stairs, we were mortified to realize that the “someone at the door” was not our neighbors but Jerry and his parents, who stared with utter horror at the “wonderful, friendly, and refined” Cohens!

After a long moment of stunned silence, Jerry introduced us to his folks, and we hastily explained our appearance. Our neighbors, also costumed, soon arrived, and we were whisked off to the party, but not before we invited the Resnicks to dinner the next day to meet the real Cohens.

Jerry’s parents must have been somewhat appeased. Jerry kept his office for another 30 years until his retirement. When he married, he and his wife Lil remained our friends. But every Halloween, Bill and I remember our unforgettable Halloween almost fifty years ago.

A version of this article originally appeared in the Jewish World News, a bi-weekly subscription-based newspaper in upstate New York.

Picture of Bill and Fran Cohen “out of costume” is from Marilyn Cohen Shapiro’s photo library.

Photo below is movie poster of Gloria Thompson as Sadie Thompson. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Come hell or high water, the celebration goes on!

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As we Floridians were waiting out Hurricane Matthew’s departure on a very rainy, windy Friday, I was thinking about those people up and down the East Coast who were more strongly impacted by the storm. Would their homes survive intact? Will family and friends be safe? Along with these worries, I thought of people who had had the misfortune to be celebrating a special event— a wedding, a bar mitzvah, a retirement party— in the middle of this major weather system. 

What do you do when bad weather creates chaos? Reflecting on our own experiences and the shared experiences of friends and relatives, I’ve learned that most people let their smile be their umbrella—or snow suit!

My brother Jay and his wife-to-be Leslie planned their engagement party on December 28, 1969, in Rockland County. My parents, my sister Bobbie, and I were scheduled to make the trip from Upstate New York the day before when a crippling snowstorm hit the Northeast.  With my father white knuckled at the wheel, we made it down the Northway to Albany only to find the Thruway was closed. Determined that the four of us would not miss the party, Dad continued the trip down Route 9.  What should have taken six hours took us twelve. The storm, which dumped over twenty-six inches of snow by the time it ended, is still recorded as the third greatest snowstorm in Albany’s history. The memories of our ride from hell were forgotten as we celebrated Jay and Leslie’s engagement the next day in sunshine and relatively warm temperatures. 

On  June 12, 1968, Betty Schoenberg was walking into Washington Square Park for   her NYU graduation when the skies opened up, and the rain fell in torrents.  Many attendees —including Betty— gave up and left, but a few hardy souls shivered under umbrellas. The storm made the front page of the next day’s New York Post:  “Soaked! “ the caption read. “The show did indeed go on despite the rain that pelted the assemblage without a letup.”

When Betty got home, she realized that the rain had soaked through her white dress, her black raincoat, and her purple graduation gown. Her clothes were ruined, and her skin had turned black from the raincoat’s dye run-off. She wrote a letter of complaint to the graduation committee, who offered to pay for her cleaning bills. She never did follow through, but almost fifty years later she still has the letter, the dry cleaning receipt, and  a clipping of the newspaper article in her memory box. 

My friend Lynn Urgenson recalls going to her daughter’s college graduation at CW Post on Long Island. The day before the event was warm and sunny, but by that morning, the temperature dropped into the low forties. Lynn wore several layers of clothing over her original outfit, but her only pair of shoes were her sandals. “ I wound up putting my feet into my purse,” said Lynn. “My teeth were still chattering hours after Caren had picked up her diploma.” 

In 2000, a spectacular mid 70-degree day preceded the largest snowfall of the entire winter season in the Capital Region and the second heaviest all time April snowstorm on record.  For the Huber family, it made Debi’s daughter Arielle’s bat mitzvah more memorable. “Some of my husband’s relatives from Florida definitely freaked out,” said Debi, “as they weren’t used to snow at that point in their lives with many years of living in the Sunshine State.” Fortunately, all of the guests had arrived before the freak storm, and the celebration went on as planned—once the parking lot of the synagogue was plowed out.

Not that the weather is always perfect in Florida. Rosanna and Norm Steele’s son and his bride were to be married on the beach near the Steele’s condo on Siesta Keys on September 25, 2004. The day before the wedding, Jeff called his parents to say that he and Julie were getting married that night as Hurricane Jeanne was bearing down on Florida the next day. Fortunately everyone— the caterer, the photographer, the florist, the violinist—worked with the wedding planner to pull the event off as planned. What was to be the rehearsal dinner became the “After Wedding Dinner,” safely held in a near-by clubhouse. The hurricane rolled in as Rosanna was bringing in the last of the food she had prepared. “Luckily, we didn’t lose power until the dinner was over,” Rosanna said. 

The Steele wedding story didn’t end there. With all flights cancelled, all of the out-of-town guests stayed longer than expected in the rented rooms—without power, cable, and air-conditioning. “ The good far outweighed the bad, “ recalled Rosanna.”   We got to spend some very valuable time together as a family.”

Jason  Freeman and Gretchen Walker’s  wedding day in the spring of 2008 was bright and sunny with one small glitch— fifty mile per hour wind gusts. The four chuppah holders  became flag bearers when the white traditional covering shredded in the wind. “The weather didn’t ruin the wedding at all,” recalled Jason, “as everyone relaxed and didn’t worry about the details.” 

Fortunately for us, Hurricane Matthew took a little hook to the right just in time for the Orlando area to miss the brunt of the storm. By Friday afternoon, I had baked a pumpkin bread and invited a group of women over to play mah jongg. Other areas of the coast were not so lucky. And some day, someone in those effected will be sharing the story of a special event in his/her life in which an unwanted guest named Matthew played a part. 

A version of this article originally appeared in the, October 20, 2016 issue of the Jewish World News, a bi-weekly subscription-based newspaper in upstate New York.

Photo: Weather hasn’t stopped me yet! Me and my rubber chicken, Winter 1953

I Am Enough

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I was always looking outside myself for strength and confidence but it comes from within. It is there all the time. Anna Freud

Since 2015, Larry and I have spent six weeks in Frisco, Colorado, a beautiful mountain town nestled in the Rockies. Our rented condo is a two-minute walk to my daughter Julie and her family. We breathe in  the fresh mountain air and savor the beauty that surrounds us. We hike on miles of trail that take us under shimmering aspens, by flowing  streams, and  onto  the shores of blue mountain lakes that reflected the snow-topped mountains. 

Frisco has always been a place of peace and renewal, but this summer I carried with me an emotional burden. I had recently launched on Amazon Keep Calm and Bake Challah: How I Survived the Pandemic, Politics, Pratfalls, and Other of Life’s Problems. My fourth book had been met with much initial excitement and congratulatory praise from the family and friends I had notified, but I had sold only eleven copies. Book stores and businesses to whom I had sent copies had not responded, and  a planned ZOOM book club centered on my writing fell through. Since my post-retirement venture into writing and blogging, I had published over 300 articles and self-published three books in addition to Keep Calm,  but I was disappointed in my perceived lack of feedback and inability to grow my audience.

Larry tried to comfort me by sharing his pride in what I had accomplished, but to no avail. I reached out to a few close friends to share my hurt. One friend offered wise advice.  “You put yourself behind the eight ball  when you rely on others to make you feel successful,” she wrote in late-night text. “If you can internalize your completing and following  through on your passion, you are a success.” I ignored her as well. Two recommended counseling. I told them I’d think about it.

Instead, my doubts spread to every major decision I had made in my life. I questioned every choice I had ever made: my college, my major, my career, my houses, my retirement, even the color I had painted the walls inside of my house. 

Outside of entries into my daily journal, I stopped writing. “I’m taking a break,” I wrote to Laurie Clevenson, my editor at the Capital Region of New York’s  Jewish World. “Are you okay?” she, who had become accustomed to a submission every two weeks for the past ten years, wrote back immediately.  I initially drafted a long explanation of my emotional state then deleted it. “I just need time off,” I reiterated. “I want to enjoy my time in the mountains without deadlines.”

I finally shared with Julie my crushing disappointment I had experienced when sales—and the resulting praise—for my articles and my books—failed to meet up to my expectations. My daughter, as always, was compassionate and understanding. “I’m sorry I didn’t provide the external validation you needed for your writing,” she said.

WAIT! Wasn’t that what my friend had referenced when she tried to console me in June? I went back to read over her text. “You also cannot make others feel obligated to stroke your ego,” she had said, a comment that angered me at the time. “I have learned that it is unimportant what others think, you need to be proud of YOU.”

 For the first time in my life, I realized how much I had depended on external validation.This was not limited to my writing. Almost every aspect of my life, I had required the approval and thumbs-up from family, friends, and even strangers. Did I choose the right career path? Buy the right house? Wear the right clothes? Weigh the right amount on the bathroom scale? Choose the right doctor? Travel to the right places with the right cruise line/tour group or guide book? Plan our retirement the right way? My need for validation was obsessive, intrusive, and self-defeating.

 With this new insight, I finally began to heal. Walking outside, surrounded by mountains and aspens and waterfalls and creeks, I realized that I write because I simply love to write. I took pride in the fact that my articles had been published in media sources from as close as Orlando’s Heritage and as far away as Australia. I was grateful for the time I had taken to interview, research, and write stories about Jewish Holocaust survivors so their sacrifice, strength, and survival can be recognized. And yes, I had gotten positive feedback from many readers, including my blog followers. Even though my books may never be on the New York Times best seller list, I have given my children and grandchildren a gift of my stories that will be my legacy. 

Moreover, I extended this new-found self-acceptance to other areas of my life. I chose not to focus on  what Robert Frost called “The Road Not Taken,” Instead, I took pride and joy in all the decisions I had made alone or with Larry that led us to the life we have now, which is filled with love, joy, thankfully good health, and happiness. Rather than depending on others to validate my choices, I decided to trust myself.

The weight I had been carrying for my whole life began to slide off my shoulders. As the poet e.e. cummings wrote, “ “Once we believe in ourselves, we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight, or any experience that reveals the human spirit.” Since the pandemic, my mantra had been “I am exactly where I need to be.”  I now have added the following:  “I am enough. I do enough. I have enough.” And I don’t need anyone but myself to affirm that fact. 

What a lovely way to start off the Jewish New Year! L’Shana Tova!