My First Ninety Years

By Naomi Rivlin

In My First Ninety Years, Naomi begins with stories of her grandparents Gussie Krumholz and Isidor Krumholz (cousins from the same town in Austria) – from their births, immigration to the United States in the pre-Ellis Island days, marriage, and lives.  The reader learns of the birth of Naomi’s parents, Rose Krumholz and Max Rothbart, and of their days growing up in Brooklyn, as first-generation Americans, and their marriage and life together.

Naomi was born in 1931 into a large and vibrant Jewish extended family. She was six when her parents and sister moved into the same house that Naomi’s grandparents bought years earlier (having realized their entrepreneurial immigrant dreams). In 1951, Naomi married Kenneth Rivlin, whose family emigrated from Wales after World War II.  Naomi and Ken moved to Long Island, where they would raise a family of their own. 

The reader learns of Naomi and Ken’s lives, business ventures/careers, involvement with the local synagogue, leisure activities, success stories, and low points in life.  The reader also gets to know Naomi and Ken’s children and grandchildren through Naomi’s words.   Ms. Rivlin also offers words of wisdom, and some Jewish and Yiddish teachings, for her grandchildren.

With characteristic bluntness, Naomi’s My First Ninety Years is funny and engaging, and written in an easy-to-read style. This book is a must read for anyone wanting an inside view of an extended family’s stories, jokes, gossip, wisdom, traditions/lore, and what might be some tall tales!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Outskirts Press
• Release date: Oct 31, 2023
• ISBN: 9781977271105

Naomi Rivlin

Ms. Rivlin is a retired school teacher who worked as a proofreader/editor at Queens College for twenty-five years. She is the mother of four talented, successful adult children, who have four equally talented, successful spouses, and she has nine beautiful grandchildren. She resides in Lynbrook, New York.

Book preview

Chapter 1

HER PARENTS’ STORY IN ROSE’S WORDS

IN 1987, SANDY and I were on our way to our cousin Francine’s daughter Bonnie’s Bat Mitzvah in New Brunswick, New Jersey. Our mother was with us in the car. The two Kens were going to the party with us the following evening, but they didn’t go with us to the Friday night service. We asked our mother to dictate to us the story of her childhood. We were prepared with pad and pen and while one of us drove, the other one wrote down her parents’ story and her childhood memories. Here are Rose’s words:

Gussie Krumholz was born in Chavnitz, Galicia, Austria on May 24, 1875, five days after her father, Gershon, died in a cholera epidemic. He was 32 years old. Gussie was the youngest of seven children. She came to the United States with her mother, Lily (Chia Lia) Abrams Krumholz, in May of 1886. They traveled on the Amsterdam and Gussie celebrated her 11th birthday on the ship. They landed in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Ellis Island didn’t open until 1892. Gussie came to the United States before there was an Ellis Island. Most of her siblings followed soon after. Their mother died in 1894. She was fifty years old.

One of Gussie’s earliest memories in the United States was of the blizzard of ’88. On March 11, 1888, one of the most severe blizzards in American history struck the Northeast. It killed 400 people and dumped 55 inches of snow in some areas. New York City ground to a halt in the face of massive snowdrifts and powerful winds. Gussie was 12 years old and she had vivid memories of the storm, which she imparted to her family. She went to night school to learn to read, speak, and write English.

When Gussie was thirteen, she worked in a blouse factory, similar to the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in Greenwich Village, which became famous in 1911 when it had the deadliest industrial disaster in the city and in the United States. There were 146 deaths and 78 young girls suffered serious injuries.

Isidor Krumholz was born in Chavnitz, Galicia, Austria on May 10, 1873. He was the youngest of five children. He came to the United States in 1890, also before Ellis Island opened. He was seventeen years old. He bought pretzels to peddle in the street. Some kids threw down his pretzel stand so that was the end of his pretzel business. Then he became a dishwasher and got blood poisoning. When he met Mr. Rosner, who was a peddler, things got better for him.

He and Mr. Rosner went from street to street selling vegetables from a horse and wagon. They worked together until Isidor married Gussie, who was his first cousin. Their fathers were brothers, both of whom died during the cholera epidemic in May of 1875, when they were in their early thirties. As a wedding present, Mr. Rosner bought Isidor his own horse and wagon and from then on things flourished.

Gussie and Isidor were married on November 8, 1896 in the Golden Star Hall at 81 Columbia Street in Brooklyn. In 1904, Isidor and his brother-in-law Louis Hammer bought the Golden Star Hall, which they made into a dance hall and saloon. The Hammers, Gussie’s sister Esther and her husband Louis, ran the saloon and Isidor continued to peddle.

Isidor and Gussie’s first four children were born on Columbia Street and when Gussie was pregnant with her fifth child in 1906, they moved to 106th Street in Harlem. The following year, in 1907, they put their things in storage and went to Syosset, Long Island, for the summer. Isidor’s business was selling onions and potatoes, and Syosset was the center of onion and potato farms.

Gussie and Isidor’s Wedding, November 8, 1896.

They rented a 10-room house that had no gas, no running water, and an outhouse. Isi had to go to Smithtown (quite a long way from Syosset) to get water for the pump. Gussie cooked on a coal stove. The children all gathered on the porch of the house to see President Theodore Roosevelt pass by on his horse. He wore Wild West hats. He always waved to the children. The following summer they went back to Syosset. Teddy Roosevelt was still President, but he had moved to Oyster Bay. That year, 1908, he still came by and waved to the children. Only then he was in a car.

Isidor gave seed to some farmers for a portion of their land for cabbage, cucumbers, tomatoes, and potatoes. Whatever his portion yielded, the farmers brought to the railroad station of the Long Island Railroad (LIRR). Isidor loaded the freight cars with the produce late in the day (around 4 or 5 pm), and took the train himself to get to Manhattan to sell his vegetables. He would sleep at a relative’s house in Manhattan. The train took about one hour from Syosset to Manhattan. The Long Island Railroad was always on time.

In 1917, they bought their own 10-room home in Borough (Boro) Park, Brooklyn. They moved in with their six children. Their seventh child was born in that house.

That is as far as my mother’s words took us, so I will tell the story from here.

Chapter 2

THE STORY CONTINUES

THE NEW HOUSE had five bedrooms, a large kitchen, living room, dining room, foyer, a sun porch, an attic, and a cellar. It was in a part of Brooklyn that was more country-like than the rest of Brooklyn; no tenements, mostly private homes and a few apartment buildings.

That was where the trees grew (there was a book written in the 1940s called A Tree Grows in Brooklyn). Gussie and Isi planted two cherry trees in their backyard. One was a sweet cherry tree that produced cherries that they ate right off the tree. The boys picked the sour cherries from the other tree and Gussie preserved them for the family to enjoy all winter. They grew into two huge trees that yielded large amounts of fruit.

Gussie had live-in help, young girls, first from Poland and later from Ireland. They worked as domestics, saved money to send back home and then returned home. The boys loved to send Katie, the Polish housekeeper, up on the ladder to pick the cherries. They stood under the tree and looked up Katie’s skirt and had great fun doing that.

Shortly after they moved into their new home, Gussie was diagnosed with breast cancer. In 1918, her right breast was removed. In 1919, Gussie was pregnant with her seventh child. The doctors called it a change of life baby. We called him Uncle Marvin.

When my parents and Grandma were speaking about something they didn’t want us kids to know about, they spelled. When we learned to spell, they spoke Yiddish, which their parents had taught them. The expression was, Sha, der kinder! When we started understanding the Yiddish, my Mom and Grandma would speak Polish that they had picked up from their housekeepers. We didn’t learn Polish.

Isidor had a massive heart attack in 1933 and died. He was 59 years old. He and Gussie had two granddaughters, Enid and Naomi, at that time. Their two oldest children, Rose and Helen each had a daughter. After Rose and Helen, they had five sons. When two of the sons married, Rose and Max and their two daughters, Naomi and Sis, moved in to help Grandma with the house and the boys, Rose’s brothers. The brothers who were still in the house were Bob, Harold, and Marvin. I remember Bob complaining when I danced in my tap shoes on the tile floor in the bathroom. He was right to complain; the noise was ear-shattering!

Chapter 3

GALITZIANAS VERSUS LITVAKS

THERE ARE A number of ways to distinguish among Jewish people. There are the Orthodox, the Conservative, and Reform members of the tribe. Then there are the Ashkenazi and the Sephardic Jews. In the synagogue for purposes of an Aliyah, the rabbi will ask if a man is a Cohain, a Levi, or an Israelite. Rabbi Morris Friedman liked to say, There are three kinds of Jews: Literate, Illiterate, and Transliterate.

In our family though, it was the Galitzianas versus the Litvaks. My mother claimed to be the only one of her siblings to marry a member of their faith. Their parents, Isidor Krumholz (1873–1933) and Gussie Krumholz (1875–1960), were both born in Galicia, Austria, which made them Galitzianas. My father’s parents, Louis Rothbart (1872–1929) and Fanny Lindenbaum (1874–1946), were also born in Galicia, Austria. They, too, were Galitzianas.

Litvaks hailed from Belorussia, Latvia, or East Poland. Rose’s siblings were Helen who wed Sam, Bob married Ruth, Nat wed Gert, Harold married Esta, Norman wed Marsha, and Marvin wed Shirley. According to Rose, they were all mixed marriages. She was the only one to marry within her religion. Max was a Galitziana. The other inlaws were Litvaks. Family humor!

Chapter 4

YANKEE DOODLE DANDY

GUSSIE WAS ELEVEN when she came to America; my other three grandparents came as teenagers. Both couples married in the U.S., which meant that all their children were born in America, some in the 1890s. This made them unusual.

Children of my parents’ generation, especially those born before the turn of the century, had parents who married in the old country and had children when they arrived at Ellis Island, which opened in 1892. None of my grandparents entered the United States through Ellis Island. Their entries predated the opening of immigration on Ellis Island. That fascinates me.

The parents of most of my friends were born in Europe. My mother was always proud to be a Yankee and thrilled to tell her daughters that they were second-generation Americans. She was a little upset when I married a Welshman, although she loved Ken dearly. She loved both her sons-in-law.

Both of my parents and my father’s older brother, Isi, were the only ones of all their siblings to be born before the turn of the 20th century. My mother who was born in the last year of the nineteenth century, aspired to live to 2001, so she would have lived in three centuries. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen, but it could happen to some of my grandchildren who were born in the last decade of the 20th century. Rachel in 1992, Josh and Michael in 1993, Sammy in 1994, and Carly, Kenny, and Kevin in 1996. Many people in 2021 are living into their 100s.

We were intrigued when we were kids when people would talk about the year 2000. We figured out how old we would be. I would be 69 and my sister 66. Would we live to witness it? The life expectancy for a male child born in 1930 was 41 and 45 for a female child.

It was a big deal and exciting. The fourth number in the year changed every year; the third number changed every ten years; the second number changed every one hundred years, but the first number only changed every one thousand years! And we were lucky enough to live to experience that change!

Preprinted forms and checks had 19_ _ on the date line. All of these would have to be reprinted with 20_ _. There was a big hullabaloo over changing the date on computers from 1999 to 2000. It was called Y2K, and the powers that be expected problems like computers launching nuclear missiles and causing planes to crash. Actually the transition was very smooth and the world didn’t come to an end!!

Chapter 5

SUMMERS IN THE 1920S

GUSSIE AND ISI vacationed in the Catskill Mountains with their whole family every summer in the 1920s. The pictures tell the story of the younger ones, Marvin, Norman, and Harold, with their parents and the older ones with their many, many friends. After my parents were engaged, there are photos of the Rothbart family joining the Krumholz family in the mountains.

They went to a place called Monticello. After Enid and I were born, the women and children stayed all week and the men remained in the city to work, and came up on weekends. I was very precocious, walking at 10 months and talking at one year. There is a story of me speaking sentences at 14 months. My mother’s friend, Gus Cohen, who was single, came up to visit during the week and was still there when my father came up on Friday evening. He went over to Gus and hugged her. Baby Naomi said, Daddy, don’t hugga her, hugga my mommy.

Chapter 6

HOW TWO SPECIAL PEOPLE GOT TO BE OUR PARENTS!

Rose Krumholz and Mac Rothbart during their courtship, 1927.

MAC ROTHBART, BORN on July 25, 1897, was the second son of Fanny and Louis Rothbart in a large and loving family. Mac was a happy-go-lucky bachelor, living at home with his parents and four of his brothers. He didn’t marry until he was 32 years old. He didn’t talk much about his younger years, but I have gleaned a profile of him from his photos.

One thing we did know about him was his love of cars and driving. He was eleven years old in 1908, when the first Model-T Ford was built. The least expensive one was $825, which might as well have been a million dollars. When he started working, Mac saved his money to buy his own Model-T (not necessarily a new one). He and his friends were enjoying life in the 1920s, traveling in their cars or in his. We have pictures that show them on a trip they took to Canada in 1925. On the way, they stopped at a place called Ausable Chasm, a tourist attraction in upstate New York. The photos portray Mac as a curious, fearless, adventurous daredevil, and an interesting, attractive man or chap as my mother would have said.

Mac Rothbart, 1925.

Rose Krumholz was the second daughter and oldest living child of Gussie and Isidor Krumholz in a large and loving family. Rose lived at home with her parents and all five of her brothers after her sister Helen married in 1927.

Rose had a multitude of friends, some of whom remained in her life well into her married years and beyond. Rose didn’t marry until she was thirty years old. She had many opportunities, but she had strict criteria. She told us that she was very particular in choosing a beau. The man had to be a gentleman, intelligent, educated, eloquent, attractive, sensitive, nicely dressed, have a sense of humor, good hygiene (clean nails), and long legs. Rose had beautiful long legs and she wanted to be sure that if she had daughters, they would have long legs.

This probably had something to do with her love of high heels and shoes in general. My mother never took her shoes off when she came home. She wore high heels to her eighty-eighth birthday celebration and up until two months before she died. She cooked dinner in her heels. I’m talking about a normal heel, not four-inch spikes.

Her friend, Helen Pakula Schor, who was Mac’s first cousin, introduced them in 1927. Mac had all the attributes that Rose was looking for, except for the long legs, but that was not a deal breaker. Rose lucked out; both daughters were tall, but only Sandy got the beautiful legs.

And that is how those two special people became our parents!

Chapter 7

ROSE AND MAC’S WEDDING

Rose and Mac’s Wedding, March 16, 1930.

THEY HAD A large, elegant engagement party at the St. George Hotel in Brooklyn. Rose Krumholz married Max (somewhere along the way, his name changed from Mac to Max) Rothbart on March 16, 1930. The wedding was held in the Leverich Towers Hotel, also in Brooklyn. They had more than two hundred people, but the one person who was missing was her matron of honor, her sister Helen. Helen had given birth the day before the wedding. Rose went to the hospital, dressed in her wedding gown, so her sister could see her as a bride. She told us that she told the nurses, See you next year. And she kept her word.

They drove to Miami Beach on their honeymoon, stopping in Savannah, Georgia, to visit relatives. They spent a week in Miami and then boarded a ship and spent a few days in Havana, Cuba. They took a lot of beautiful pictures of some charming spots. They then returned to Miami and drove home.

Helen was due in early March, but the doctor assured her that she would not go full term. She had a premature baby who died before Enid was born, so Rose and Max set the date for March 16. Big surprise; Enid had her own plan! My cousin Enid Phyllis Rosenthal arrived on March 15, 1930. She was the first of the grandchildren. All the uncles (27 years down to 9½) were still living at home and they lined up on the front steps of 1651 47th Street, waiting to push her in her carriage. Some friends of the uncles joined the line to wheel that special baby!

Chapter 8

THE BASSINET

IN 1930, WHEN Enid was born, Aunt Helen and Uncle Sam bought a beautiful bassinet for their new baby to sleep in. A bassinet is an upgrade from the old-fashioned cradles that were used in the nineteenth century. This one was made of wood laced into a design with open woodwork to allow for plenty of airflow. It was on wheels so it could be moved into different rooms. It was beautifully decorated with ribbons and bows in either blue or pink. For a while it was usually pink, but then it was always blue. It was passed on to everyone and anyone who was having a baby – all the family members and many of the extended family members and friends. At one point in the 1990s, it was refurbished. Enid and I found a place in Rockville Centre that did a beautiful job.

There weren’t too many babies who were able to luxuriate in it for as long as they wanted. Claire and Eliana were two who didn’t have other babies being born close to their birth dates. Claire and Sam’s baby, Arden Millie Stampfer, was born on August 7, 2021, and she was able to stay in it as long as she wanted.

My sister was the first to have a short stay when Bud was born five weeks after Sis. Phoebe dispossessed Gary when she arrived less than five weeks after him. The following year, Laurie came thirty days after Jeffrey. Jay Kulick and Gregg Weintraub were born exactly one week apart. Benjamin Gross was born May 3, 1993, and Josh arrived six weeks later. Michael was born twenty-six days after Josh. Most babies were in it for two or three weeks.

Enid was the keeper of the bassinet when her mother, Aunt Helen, passed it on to her. Then it went to Phoebe and now it is in Atlanta, Georgia, housing the fourth generation of Rosenthal/Glabman/Gross/Stampfer babies. Claire will now be its keeper.

Chapter 9

MY ENTRANCE INTO THE WORLD

Naomi Marilyn Rothbart, 1931.

I WAS BORN Naomi Marilyn Rothbart at Israel Zion Hospital (later renamed Maimonides Hospital) in Boro Park. I weighed 8 lbs., 13 oz. and I was born at 8:20 am on Monday, April 27, 1931. My mother had a ritual; she called me every year at 8:20 am on my birthday and sang Happy Birthday to me. According to my mother, I was born with dark hair. Both of my parents had dark hair, although my mother’s hair did have an auburn (reddish) tint. Mom quickly added that by the time they brought me home from the hospital (women stayed in the hospital for 10 days after a regular birth), my hair was bright red. I always told my parents that they probably brought the wrong baby home from the hospital.

I was quickly reminded that Grandpa Louis Rothbart had a red beard. The name Rothbart in German means red beard. My parents would take my braids and put them under my chin and say, You look just like Grandpa. I wondered if when Grandpa came to the U.S., his name was Rothbart, or did the immigration people give him that name because he had a red beard? There were stories about the immigration people changing names.

There was this joke: A man drives into the city and sees a Chinese laundry and the name on the store sign reads Moshe Cohen’s Chinese Laundry. He goes in and he sees a Chinese man and he says, Are you Moshe Cohen? The man says yes. The other man says, What an unusual name for a Chinese man. The Chinese man says, When I was on the immigration line, the man in front of me was named Moshe Cohen. When they asked me my name, I said, ‘Sam Ting.’ And that’s how I got to be Moshe Cohen!

I came home from the hospital to an apartment on 15th Avenue in Boro Park. Then we moved to 1647 47th Street, right next door to my grandparents’ house. It was a 3-family house; my friend Hendel Berman lived there later. When I was a little more than a year old, my Grandma Rothbart (I don’t know why we called her that and not Grandma Fanny; we called our other grandmother, Grandma Gussie) called my mother to say hello and asked how the baby was. My mother realized I was very quiet and she said, Hold on, let me go check on her. Mom found me in our bathroom at the toilet. She looked in the bowl and there was our little kitten and little Naomi was trying to flush the toilet. My mother screamed and saved the kitten. The other tale my mother told was that I bit the family dog. Nobody knows why! Little Naomi was not an adorable child!

Chapter 10

SISTER AND BROTHER

Back row (from left): Enid and Naomi;

Front row: Bud and Sis, 1936.

WHEN SIS AND Bud were born, somebody thought it would be cute to call them Sister and Brother; later changed to Sis (Sissy) and Bud (never Buddy).

They were born five weeks apart in 1934; Sis on February 11th and Bud on March 21st. I was 2 years, 10 months, and fifteen days old when Sis was born at 4:30 am (Mom didn’t call her at 4:30 am on her birthday). Every year on Sissy’s birthday, she was told the same story by Aunt Sarah, Grandma’s sister. When your father came back to Grandma’s house from the hospital, we asked him what she had. He very quietly said, ‘Another goil.’

Mom told us that she wanted to have a third child, but that Dad was afraid it would be another girl. In those days, men called guys who had only daughters, button-hole makers. My father didn’t like that. It implied that he was less of a man.

Grandpa Isidor died one year before Sis and Bud were born. There was no question for whom they were going to be named. The boy got the direct name, Isidore (spelled differently) and because Grandpa’s Hebrew name was Yisrael, but in Yiddish it was Sruel, the girl could be named with an S. She was named Sandra (Sura). When the next boy came along, he was also named Isidore with the middle name of Elroy and he was called Roy all his life.

The question asked by my grandchildren, when they found out what Bud’s real name is, why bother to name a boy directly after someone if they are never going to use the name? The first answer is that when naming a Jewish baby, the Hebrew name should be the exact Hebrew name as the person for whom you are naming. The second answer is that in Hebrew School, they were called Yisrael and Sura. In public school, Bud was called Isidore and Sis was called Sandra.

Sandra and Isidore went all through school together. They were like twins (early on they were dressed in matching sister and brother outfits) with two different last names. Enid and I were also dressed as twins for many years. Sis and Bud were always in the same classes and, when they were in kindergarten, they were having a discussion, Who was taller? First they stood up back-to-back, then they stood on their chairs, then on the table. When the teacher saw what was happening, she put them in two separate corners!

In P.S. 192, they were skipped together from 1B to 2B and graduated from public school together. (Elementary schools were called public schools in those days. In fact, the PS stood for public school. I don’t know when it was changed to elementary school.) They proceeded on to Montauk and then to New Utrecht High School together, although not necessarily in the same classes. They both went to Brooklyn College, pursued different majors, and graduated together.

Enid and I were not allowed to go to Hebrew School because, according to Grandma, it was too dangerous for us to cross 16th Avenue (where there were electric buses). Grandma Gussie was a very strong lady and her daughters followed her rules. What she said was gospel. If somebody thought of doing something that went against her wishes, her response was I may never live.

Boys had to go, but for girls it was optional. Bud came home from Hebrew School and was teaching Sis what he learned and she said she wanted to go, too. She went and loved it. Sandy was able to read Torah, chant perfect Haftorahs, and had many aliyahs over the years. She always belonged to an egalitarian synagogue. At times, she led the service in Temple Israel in Riverhead when no one else was available to do so. She was learning to speak Hebrew.

When Bud was drafted into the army, he looked for Sis. It was the first time they had been separated.

As for who was taller, when Bud was a Bar Mitzvah he was little. Sis at thirteen had reached her full height, which was 5 ft., 6 in. At Bud’s Bar Mitzvah, when the two of them danced together, she could eat apples off his head (an expression of the day). He grew after his Bar Mitzvah and went way past his twin cousin. Bud grew to be six feet tall!

Chapter 11

COUSIN MAURICEY

WHEN SIS WAS born, a cousin of my mother’s came with her 5-year-old son and they brought a gift for the new baby, but not for me. So I bit him. His name was Maurice, and they called him Mauricey. He grew up and we used to see him at cousins’ club meetings with Grandma Gussie’s siblings, their children, and grandchildren.

Many years later, I was visiting in Flatbush, where my grandmother and my parents lived. They had sold the house in Boro Park and moved to 650 Ocean Avenue in Flatbush, three weeks after my wedding. So except for the weekends that I stayed there while Ken was in the army, I never lived in 650. Sis (16 at the time) did live there until she married in 1954. Uncle Harold and Grandma lived with my parents. It was an eight-room apartment with four bedrooms and two-and-a-half bathrooms on the fifth floor. Uncle Nat, Aunt Gert, Leta, and Roy had an apartment on the second floor in the same building and Aunt Helen, Uncle Sam, Enid, and Bud lived in the same building on the third floor.

Grandma was very upset that day. I asked her what was wrong. She had just learned that 27-year-old Mauricey was getting married and he was marrying a divorcée with two children. Isn’t that terrible? Grandma said. I thought fast and came up with something I thought would help her to see it in a different way. I said, Look Grandma, I have two small children and God forbid something happened to my husband and I found myself young, widowed or divorced with two children, wouldn’t you be thrilled for me if I found a wonderful young man like Mauricey to marry me and take care of me and my family? She said, Oh you’re right. I didn’t think of it that way. When Grandma died, we lost touch with Maurice and his parents.

Chapter 12

FAR ROCKAWAY SUMMERS

Back row (from left): Max, Rhoda Goldman, Uncle Nat holding Roy, Uncle Marvin, Burton, Uncle Bob; Front row: Naomi, Bud, Enid, Hedda Kurzweil (in back), Morty Kurzweil, Sis, 1939.

BEGINNING IN THE summer of 1934, the year that Sister and Brother were born, the whole family traveled out to Far Rockaway, 3rd Street in Simis Beach, to be exact. Simis Beach was the nine streets adjacent to the Atlantic Beach Bridge. It included Beach 2nd through 9th Streets. The family took one big house together for the summer. Enid was four and I was three and we started taking swimming lessons from the lifeguard named Lou. He had a catamaran and he would take the boat out and we swam after it. That was a year or two after that first summer. I think we were 5 and 6.

Every year, moving out for the summer, we crossed the Marine Park Bridge (the toll was 10 cents), crossing from Brooklyn into the Rockaways. As the breezes wafted up from the ocean into the hot, un-air conditioned car, in unison, the adults all declared It’s a machaya!

One of the houses they rented for several summers was the Johnberg house on Beach 3rd Street. In 1942, we were there with the usual group plus Gert, Nat, Roy, and six-month old Leta Ruby. My father left for work early and he would go into Leta’s room to see her before he left. Her bedroom was on the first floor. The rest of us, except for Grandma, were all on the upper floor. Leta was an adorable six-month-old, who was up and happy to see him. She usually had a full diaper, which I suspect he ignored. But their little interchange made his day every day. Those two pals bonded and went fishing together in later years.

We continued going to Far Rockaway in different houses every year, including 1943 when we were in a large house on Beach 9th Street and Seagirt Avenue. They could have bought that house for $5,000, but no one thought it was worth it. The following year prices went up dramatically and we left Far Rockaway.

It was in that house that we got the news that my Uncle Henry, my father’s youngest brother, died on July 27, 1943. He was in the army and stationed in Texas. He was a medical doctor (our family doctor at the time he was drafted). When we got word that his unit was being shipped overseas to Europe to go into combat, the family was very upset. Then came the good news that he had developed a hernia and needed an operation. His unit was sent overseas and he stayed stateside. He was waiting to be reassigned and then was attached to a cavalry unit. Living in Brooklyn his entire life, he had never ridden a horse, so they were giving him riding lessons. He was thrown from the horse and killed in Texas at the age of 31. He left a wife, Ruth, but no children.

Fast forward fifty-nine years, in 2002, when my sister Sandy and our cousin Harold Rothbart were planning a Rothbart Reunion at Sandy and Ken’s house in South Jamesport, they found two daughters of Henry’s widow Ruth. Ruth had remarried after the war. The two women, Helen Kloogman and Joan Borkow, were so excited to be included in the reunion. Their mother was gone, but she had told them stories of her first husband’s family, so they were anxious to meet us. We met and found out about our Aunt Ruth after we had lost touch with her. Strangely or coincidentally, her girls were named with two familiar names, Helen, which was Henry’s sister’s name, and Joan, which was the name of one of her first husband’s nieces.

Chapter 13

WORLD’S FAIRS

IN THE SUMMER of 1939, we were at 201 Seagirt Avenue, on the corner of Beach Second Street and Seagirt Avenue. We had gone to the 1939 World’s Fair, which was held in Flushing Meadow Park in Queens, New York. The symbols of the Fair were the Trylon and the Perisphere!

One of the pavilions we went into was the Chinese Pavilion and we observed a new game Chinese men were playing. It was called mah jongg. Our family were game players and it looked interesting enough to the adults to want to buy it. There was a toy store called Neveloff’s in town (that’s what we called the shopping area in Far Rockaway) and Aunt Helen bought a mah jongg set for us and taught us how to play. The tiles were made of cardboard and came attached and had to be broken apart. We played mah jongg that summer. I was eight years old.

A not-so-happy memory was when we were separated from my father at the Fair, and I was worried that we were never going to find each other. We did!

In 1964–65, New York had another World’s Fair. It was in the same location as the earlier one. Ken and I went several times with our children. I was pregnant with Jay in 1964. There was a robot named Electro that was on display and we all found it fascinating. As we were walking around the Fair, I saw my cousin, Muriel Rothbart Salzman, sitting on a bench, nursing her newborn infant, Amy. I am in touch with Amy, who is married to Howard Gorman and has a son.

Chapter 14

OUR NEXT MOVES

WE MOVED INTO the Rosenbleet house at 1675 47th Street. Murray Rosenbleet was a childhood friend of Uncle Marvin. It was a two-family house and we all lived there together, the Rosenthals and the Rothbarts. There was a book in 2015 and it reminded me of our childhood. The Two-Family House was the name of the book about two brothers (and their wives, Rose and Helen) and their families living together. It was very different from our life, but there were similarities, and when I read it, it reminded me of those days.

I had a good friend, Francine Umans, who lived in the biggest house on the block on the corner of 17th Avenue. She had a much older father, who was very tall and very rich. Her mother was his second wife. Fran had a brother Stanton and two half-brothers, Larry and Robert. Francine had been a premature baby, but she was the tallest and biggest kid in our class.

The next move was a big one. Not only was it just us, Mom, Dad, Sis, and me, but it was out of Boro Park. We moved to 294 Webster Avenue, near Newkirk Avenue, in Flatbush. People moved a lot more in those days. I was four and we had moved four times. There were stories that some people moved when their apartment needed to be painted and others moved when the rent was due. I don’t know why we moved.

Chapter 15

EARLY SCHOOL DAYS

I STARTED KINDERGARTEN in P.S. 217 on Coney Island and Foster Avenues. The cutoff date for the February entrance into kindergarten was April 30th, so I just made it, and I started school before I was five. My first-grade teacher, Mrs. Frieze, lived in our apartment building.

When Sis was two, she was very sick. She had mastoiditis, an infection of the mastoid, which is part of the skull behind the ear. I remember Uncle Sidney, my father’s brother who was our family doctor at that time, coming to the apartment. Everyone was worried that Sissy (we called her Sis or Sissy then) wasn’t going to make it. Fortunately, she got better.

Grandpa Isidor died suddenly of a massive heart attack on February 2, 1933. Marvin was 12½ years old, Norman was 18, Harold was 24, Nat was 27, and Bob was 31. All the boys were still living at home. Grandma had help in the house, but there was a lot of work. Grandma spoiled her boys and they didn’t do too much for themselves. Nat married in 1934 and Norman in 1938. After Norman moved out, we moved into 1651 47th Street, so my mother could help Grandma. I was 6½, Sissy 4, and Uncle Marvin was 17½. He was going to NYU and the only thing I remember about his youth is his many friends and his spreading his school projects out on the dining room table and warning us not to touch anything.

My sister and I shared a bedroom in Grandma’s house. Not only did we share a bedroom; we also shared a bed. I used to make her cry and before my mother could come in to see why she was crying, I would tickle her so she’d be laughing when Mom came into our room. I was renowned for pulling Enid’s hair and making her cry. It wasn’t hard to make Enid cry. She cried at Shirley Temple movies, which were the only movies we were permitted to see until we were 11 years old. Shirley Temple was a pretty little girl not much older than we were, who danced and sang and made movies, which usually had sad things happen to her. I didn’t cry; I never cried. I also never said I was sorry for anything I had done. If my parents wanted to punish me and take away a privilege, my response was, I didn’t want it anyway.

I had to switch schools from P.S. 217 to P.S. 192, where Enid went. Enid had been skipped (pushed ahead one grade) when I got to P.S. 192. She had skipped 2A, going from 1B to 2B. Sis and Bud also skipped 2A. I started 192 in 2A, so I missed the skipping part and I looked like the dummy of the group. That could be why I was such a bratty kid.

The principal of P.S. 192 was Nora D. Stafford. Some of the teachers I remember were Miss Downey (there were two of them; two spinster sisters; I had Agnes), Mrs. Hodes, Mrs. Sadie Morrison, and Mrs. Edna Moos. I never had Mrs. Moos, but Aunt Helen befriended her and kept in touch with her long after we left P.S. 192. I had Mrs. Hodes in fourth grade. She taught us how to sew and she always told me my thread was too long. I still make the thread too long, because now when I am able to thread a needle (not an easy task these days), I want to make sure I have enough thread to finish the job.

When my parents went to Back-To-School Night and asked how I was doing, they heard rave reviews: polite, attentive, bright, shy, and many other glowing adjectives. My parents’ response, Naomi Rothbart, are you sure you have that right? Apparently, I didn’t exhibit my bad behavior in school and all my teachers loved me.

When I was in sixth grade, a friend and I had gone to the bathroom together. We were fooling around on the staircase, and I bumped my knee on one of the metal steps. It was painful, but we didn’t tell the teacher. When I got home, I told my mother and she saw the bruise on my knee. A few days later, my parents took me to Uncle Henry’s office. He was my father’s brother and our family doctor at that time. He said it was water on the knee and we will have to remove it at some point.

Shortly after that, Uncle Henry went into the army and didn’t come home. The operation never happened and, years later, Uncle Sidney, Dad’s other doctor brother, said the water had solidified, and I (80 years later) still have a bump on my right knee and a story to tell.

Chapter 16

LEGENDARY FAMILY SEDERS

SEDERS AT GRANDMA’S at 1651 47th Street were wondrous affairs. Uncle Sam ran them with perfection, having everyone participate in the service; the youngest asking the four questions, everyone drinking the four glasses of wine or juice, and acknowledging the symbols on the Seder plate: roasted shank bone, parsley, burnt egg, charoset, and horseradish (whole pieces and ground). We sat in double-rowed chairs around the magnificent dining room table. (See Bud’s story about The Table below)

The table was part of a beautiful dining room set that their daughters bought for their parents sometime after they moved into their new home. The set included a China closet, a server, a buffet, and the table (which had four 12" leaves/boards to make it larger) and six upholstered chairs, two with arms. I inherited the set when my mother moved into a smaller apartment at 2781 Ocean Avenue. Unfortunately, it was damaged in the fire I had at 11 Jay Court. I sold it to the furniture refinisher, after making sure nobody in my family wanted it.

Everyone was invited to Seders at Grandma’s. Not only all the uncles, aunts, and cousins, but extended family as well. Parents and siblings of the inlaws were there, too, as many as forty people in double rows around the table.

Aunt Gert’s younger brother, Irving Bloom, was home on leave from the marines, so he was invited to our legendary Seder. He was very handsome in his uniform, and I had a school-girl crush on him. He was