And a long life she had.
She would say, "A book zum beshcriben", which translates to "You can write a book about it."
She was a woman who lived.
To add a little perspective, Bertie was born one year after the sinking of the Titanic. As she grew up, she witnessed history day by day, as so many events unfolded to shape the world we all know: from World War I to the Iraq War; from television to the internet; from Pearl Harbor to September 11th; the Apollo Moon Landing to the Space Shuttle Discovery.
These events made up the last 93 years or so of human history. And she was there for all of it.
Bertie was born in a small house at 86 Hopkins Street in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, New York, the child of two immigrants who came to the United States seeking a better life, trying to escape oppression in Eastern Europe.
Her parents were Ida and Harry Cohen. They met in Brooklyn, New York in 1907, one hundred years ago. No one knows the story of how they met, but the important part is that they did meet, fell in love and raised a family. They were simple people, but good people. Harry was a cooper (barrel-maker), a family trade he learned from his father in their hometown of Zashkov. Rumor has it that he helped run whiskey to speak-easies during prohibition. Ida kept the house. She cooked and cleaned and raised her children.
In April 1913, on the first Seder of Passover, Ida said to Harry, in Yiddish, of course, "Heschel, call the doctor." A few hours later, Bertha Cohen entered the world, with bright red hair and a rosey smile.
Bertie was the third of eight children. She was named after her paternal great-grandmother, who lived to be 103. Bertie often quoted her father's words with the re-telling of how she was named, "May she live to be as old as my Bubba Brina." His blessing came very close.
She often asked her mother, "Mamma, why did you name me after a battleship?" "Such a nice name, 'Bertha' (shayna nomen, Bertie)," her mother would say, again, in Yiddish.
Bertie often spoke of her father, telling how he would sit her on his lap and sing a song to her in Russian, or how he was so friendly and loving to his friends and neighbors. He'd invite them all over to join him at breakfast on weekends.
Bertie would always talk about her love of sweets. She loved to nosh. Something she referred to as the "Cohen Curse". When her father gave her 15 cents for her weekly piano lesson: 5 cents for the trolley there, 5 cents for the lesson and 5 cents for the trolley home, she eventually figured out that she could walk home, stopping along the way at the candy shop to buy three donuts for a nickel.
She would look back at old pictures of herself and exclaim jokingly, "I was a truck!"
In grade school, Bertie made many friends. Amongst them was a young girl named Celia Zanit. Their friendship spanned over 60 years and eventually, Ceil's grandson Steve would marry Bertie's granddaughter, Alyson in 2002.
Bertie started working when she was very young. Her mother's cousin, Ben Cibulsky owned a hat factory in New York City, Fairview Hats. Bertie was hired as one of the girls who pinned the ribbons on the hats. After a few months, the head bookkeeper at the hat company needed an assistant so she asked for one of the girls from the floor. The manager pointed to two girls and gave her a choice: the brunette or the red-head. She chose the red-head, and Bertie became the apprentice to the head bookkeeper, Jean Friedman. Jean was 10-years older than Bertie, and very strict, but she saw potential in Bertie and she taught her the craft of bookkeeping. Jean and Bertie had a very special friendship. When Jean moved out to California with her brother Mac, Bertie would visit almost every year, traditionally remembering to send miniature wooden orange crates filled with candy to her grandchildren back home.
Bertie would tell you that she wasn't the greatest student in school. But she was smart. She would take the opportunity of her mother's occasional migraine headaches to ask her to sign a report card. Bertie would wake her mother up and say, "Ma, please sign this for school." Ida would sign it and turn it over. She saw a lot of C's on her report card and said, "Gai endrey-ad" which roughly translates to "Go to hell."
When Bertie was 16, her mother had another baby, Myrna. Myrna was born with bright-red hair, just like Bertie. Harry said, "Now we have another "Berthala" to take care of us when we're older." Sadly Myrna died two years later of pneumonia.
The next year, Bertie's father Harry decided to go after one of his dreams: opening his own bar, or what in those days was called a "Beer Garden". Prohibition had recently been repealed, paving the way for him to open his own place, and it almost came true. Sadly, about two weeks before the bar opened, Harry became very sick, and he too died of pneumonia. Bertie was only 20 years old, and now the family breadwinner.
The family decided it was best to continue work on the beer garden and open for business, to see if it was as lucrative as Harry planned. Bertie served drinks and food to the occasionally rowdy customers. This was during the Great Depression. Once in a while, a bar fight would break out. Bertie and Ida would hide behind the bar, while Bertie's 16-year old brother, "Louie" had one job to do when a bar-fight broke out: to stand in front of the ceiling high, very expensive mirror, with his fists at his side, waiting for a body to come flying in his direction, and then diverting it away from the mirror.
After they closed the bar, they needed a new atmosphere. A fresh start. Bertie, her mother and four siblings moved into a new home at 58 Hart Street. She became friendly with her upstairs neighbors, Gussie & Julius Slotnick. After some time, Gussie decided to arrange a "shiddoch" (a date) between her brother Harry and Bertie. Bertie commented that when they met, Harry was very shy, but that soon changed, and eventually they both knew they would get married. He would lovingly give her the nickname "Red", after her bright red hair.
Their wedding was on Father's Day Weekend, 1936.
As Bertie described, everything at the wedding was cooked and baked. There were so many Slotnicks and Kagans and Cohens. 100 people. All in the backyard. For wedding presents, Bertie and Harry were given gold pieces: a $5 Gold Piece; a $2 Gold Piece. Bertie said, "If you were rich, you saved them. If you needed the money, you brought them to the bank and spent them. We spent them."
She had a difficult marriage. One of Harry's cousins joked to Bertie, "You have to have 'nerves of iron' to marry him." But in her own words, she was "completely berserk over that man."
They had good days and bad days as any marriage does.
In December 1938, Bertie's life changed again, and she became a mother. This title could easily earn her picture a place in any dictionary next to the word.
She will always be remembered for her loving expressions ranging from "Brothers mustn't fight" to "Bob, if you follow your brother, I'll break both your legs!"
Her three sons, Harvey, Bob and Dennis were her pride and joy.
She lived for them. She taught them to respect each other; to love one another. If you were to ask her what her greatest accomplishment in life was, she would proudly say, "My sons." She raised them to be well-mannered and polite, and she struck fear in the hearts of men (and children) who didn't clean their rooms or hang up their coats when they came home from school.
Bertie loved animals. She had one favorite, a parakeet named Long John. She talk him to say many things including, "I don't wanna talk", "Open the door, let me out" and "Mazel Tov". She enjoyed throwing a little ball and watching him run to get it and bring it back. She loved all little creatures, from the little frogs her grandsons would bring home to the fish her great-granddaughter asked her to babysit.
One day, she bought a $2-camera, and with it began taking a life-time of pictures. You never saw so many pictures of her three boys as well as other family members. She documented their lives one click at a time.
Their happy family life was interrupted in 1951, when her youngest, Dennis was diagnosed with cancer. Five months later, he died, something Bertie never fully recovered from, as no mother who loses a child could.
Bertie's marriage became more and more difficult to maintain and she finally had enough. 24 years after they were married, they had dinner and she announced her plans to move out with Bob (who was 15 at the time). Bertie and Bob got an apartment on East 18th Street in Sheepshead Bay.
After Bertie moved out, she allowed Harry to come and go as he pleased. She wanted him to be able to see his children. She still loved him, she just could not live with him.
For their 25th Anniversary, Harry came over with flowers and a card. He gave her a kiss.
A few years later, both of her sons married and Bertie learned the benefits of not only being a mother, but a mother-in-law. She had a very close relationship with both Hedy and Ruth.
Every Thanksgiving, Hedy and Ruth would be assigned the responsibility of bringing the candy corn, one of Bertie's favorite snacks. At Easter-time they brought jellybeans. As the years got on, a friendly competition developed seeing who would bring the bigger bag of beans.
Bertie was more like a mother than a mother-in-law to Ruth, as Ruth's own mother passed away when she was only 18, something Bertie empathized with. She was just as loving to Ruth's sisters and their families and she was there for them, filling in as "Grandma Bertie" at all family gatherings.
Bertie always worked. That is, until each of her pregnancies, and when she immediately quit her job because she was embarrassed to show her growing belly. Right after each child was born, she went back to work immediately, getting help from her mother as the babysitter. She worked in restaurants for many years, keeping the books. Her mother didn't like seeing her work in the restaurants. She always wanted her to have an office job.
Eventually she would get that office job, working for the Dreyfus Corporation. When she applied for the job, she lied about her age, thinking she wouldn't be hired at 58 years old. She made so many friends at Dreyfus. They were her extended family and she loved them. She got to the office every morning at 6am, and kept her desk drawer well-stocked with all sorts of cookies (giving her the name "The Cookie Lady".) Co-workers would stop by one or two times a day for a cookie and a friendly smile.
As the years went by, and technology advanced in leaps and bounds, she worried about being an "old dog" and having to learn "new tricks". The one thing she was afraid of more than anything at work was a computer. The entire office was converting from typewriter to computer, but it was decreed that Bertie was allowed to keep her typewriter.
Her fear of technology lived on, as years later, she made her grandson Jeff promise not to "buy her an internet".
If there was anything she loved more than being a mother, it was being a grandmother. Her love for her grandchildren was so great, words cannot accurately describe it. Jeffrey, Gary, Alyson and Kerry were her life.
And she lived to spoil them rotten. Upon arrival at her basement apartment on East 18th Street in Brooklyn, her grandchildren knew to proceed right to the kitchen to the bottom drawer, to find their goodie bag. And every year, they were treated to a birthday party with all the decorations: streamers, balloons, noise makers and loot bags: a dream come true for a child at any age.
They loved spending time with her, either in her basement apartment in Brooklyn. On these wonderful weekends, she would always repeat the big rule which was now handed down a generation, "Brother's mustn't fight."
She would walk them to the park a few blocks away to play on the monkey-bars, or take them strolling on Avenue U. On occasion she would treat them to delicious breakfast at their favorite diner, the "Three Star" Restaurant and after, a small shopping spree at G & G Variety, the local "5 and dime".
Each of her grandchildren fondly remember the joy of "see-a-luck-a-saw", where they would sit on her lap and she would tickle and rock them until they laughed uncontrollably.
Bertie always liked a bright room: in the kitchen, in the living room, every room in the house. She requested 100 watt bulbs, even when a 60 watt bulb was all you needed. She'd say that she wanted a "lichtick in de aigen" – a light in the eyes.
Bertie loved music. She would kvell over Lily Pons, Jan Peerce, Luciano Pavarotti, even the Beatles and Tom Jones. She listened to every word, humming along with the melodies, but listening more carefully to the lyrics, as she enjoyed the storytelling aspect of the songs.
The one song she loved the most was "The Bluebird of Happiness" by Jan Peerce. Perhaps she looked upon her own life and reflected on the lyrics:
The poet with his pen,
The peasant with his plow,
It makes no difference who you are,
It's all the same somehow.
The king upon his thrown
The jester on his feet
The artist, the actress,
The man on the street.
Its a life of smiles and a life of tears
A life of hopes and a life of fears
A blinding torrent of rain
And a brilliant burst of sun
A biting tearing pain
And bubbling sparkling fun.
So no matter what you have
Don't envy those you meet.
It's all the same, it's in the game
The bitter and the sweet.
And if things don't look so cheerful
Just show a little fight
For every bit of darkness, there's a little bit of light
For every bit of hatred, there's a little bit of love
For every cloudy morning, there's a midnight moon above
So be like I, hold your head up high
'Til you see that ray of light shine through.
And so remember this life is no abyss
Somewhere there's a Bluebird of Happiness
In 2000, Bertie became a GREAT grandmother. Jamie was the first of 5 great-grandchildren, followed by Lauren, Logan, Holly & Rachel. She loved each and every addition to her family, and often joked, "Their parents have no idea what I do to them when no one is looking…" alluding to how she would bite their little hands and feet and squeeze their cheeks.
About two years ago, she moved to Bob and Ruth's basement, where they set her up with her own place. She quickly made friends with all of the neighbors who would frequently come by to talk with her. When she would get visitors, she enjoyed putting out candy, just like she did years ago in her Brooklyn apartment.
She had great pleasure in seeing her great-granddaughters Lauren and Rachel every weekend as they would come over while Alyson worked on Saturdays. At other family gatherings, she loved spending precious time with Jamie, Logan and Holly.
Her greatest pleasure in her later years was seeing her entire family together. On Mother's Day or her birthday, or some other special occasion, when Harvey and Bob were with her, along with their entire families, she would say how happy she was to have "100% Attendance".
And then she added, "And I started the whole mess."
When a person like Bertie leaves this world, it is difficult not to feel sad. She filled our lives with so much love and hope. She helped us forget our troubles with a cookie, or some candy, or only a smile.
Bertie never understood the concept of payback. She would give so much to everyone and never want anything in return. She loved to give. When she finally retired from work, her co-workers bought her a book called, "The Giving Tree". It was a story about a tree that loved to give, and after the tree gave, the tree was happy. Bertie loved this book. She showed it to everyone who visited her at home.
Bertie Kagan was the person we all aspire to be on the inside: warm, loving, friendly and thoughtful. Her smile will live on in all those she knew and loved. And they loved her.
And she was happy.
1 comment:
Jeff, thank you so much for this beautiful eulogy of Aunt Bertha. More than representing Bertha Kagan, it represents the legacy she leaves behind in her family. I'm glad to know a little bit more about my Aunt Bertha, who always gave us M&M's, and made Vicki and I feel so special. You are a living tribute to her joy in life. Love, Cuz Drew
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