1 December 2015

It happened again. I couldn’t believe it but I have two witnesses. Just as I was about to leave my weekly writing class at the library of the Simon Wiesenthal Center (SWC), I stopped by the entry desk to log in my couple of volunteer hours. In front of that desk is a low wall, and next to that a three-tiered book rack on wheels filled with books in various sizes and content available for anyone to purchase. These are used books donated to the SWC but in the case the SWC already has these they offer them for sale at very minimal costs.

So right there on the top shelf was a small stack of five smallish books, with brown mottled covers, with some Hebrew lettering in gold on the top front cover. I picked up the top one and maybe because of my genealogical curiosity or experience I flipped to the inside back cover. It was after all a Hebrew book and not an English one, and what I saw there made me gasp in amazement.

Below a couple of penciled lines with Hebrew letters, were several clearly written and printed lines that constituted a family history of sorts. How could this precious piece of family documentation have ended up here? I knew I had to find the family who had donated it unaware of its contents and return it to their loving hands.

Susan, the library administrative assistant who sits at the desk behind that low wall, knows me as well as my daughter and father-in-law who both used to volunteer at the library. When she observed with her keen blue eyes what had transpired, she looked at me and said,

“Go ahead – take them!”

So I did. Excitedly, I returned home with my 5-pack and then I had a chance to really read what was written there. Here’s the content and a photo of that transcription.

Wow! I thought, whoever that was crammed a whole lot of information into one small compact page. But I didn’t even have a name to go by. Sure there was an address, but if that book had been given away, the writer was no longer alive! But the year 2000 was not so long ago. How much effort would it be to try and figure out who this was and then how to return it?

First, from the lettering in Hebrew, I realized it was not Hebrew but Yiddish. While my Yiddish is not great, I could readily figure out that it translated as:

Keyla was born the 20th day of Kislev, at 10 PM, in Brussels.

The 20th day of Kislev? Incredible! Because while I found these late in the day on December 1, 2015, the corresponding Hebrew date was no less than the 20th of Kislev 5776 – 85 years later!

So Keyla, most probably had changed her name to something more American, and she had provided her secular date of birth of December 9, 1930. She had provided the names of her parents and their dates of birth. All this was information I could work with.

With her family name and place and exact date of birth I started with Ancestry.com. With these criteria, I found her Social Security Death Index (SSDI) Record that yielded her first name as “Caroline” and that she had died 1 February 2001. That was less than 6 months from the time she had written that mini-family history! Maybe she never had a chance to tell anyone that she had even done that.

After that, I found the 1940 Census record that had William, Fannie and Caroline FRIEDMAN living on Howard Ave. in Brooklyn. Father William’s occupation was listed as “Furrier, Floor Boy.” I have no idea what “Floor Boy” was supposed to be, but I was intrigued that he had been in the fur business, as had my late father. The 1940 census is the latest census available to the public, since 72 years has to elapse before a census becomes available. So the 1950 census won’t be available until 2022.

Figure 3 Extracted from 1940 Census, FRIEDMAN Family

Her SSDI record had also provided her name as of when she died. Her name of Caroline devolved to the less formal, Carrie, and she had married someone with the family name of HODES. Could I find an obituary for her? That would help me find a next of kin. Except, I could not find an obituary for her. So what about the man she married? What was his first name?

Figure 4 California Marriage Record, Sam HODES to Caroline FRIEDMAN

I found a marriage record for a Samuel HODES who had married Caroline FRIEDMAN on 12-24-1950, almost exactly the date of her parents’ marriage, less one day. Was he still alive? I doubted that because these books were at the SWC, as if descendants had been clearing house. Could I find an obituary for Sam? I lucked out.

Hodes, Sam May 29, 1929 – January 26, 2013 Sam was born in South Bend, Indiana and moved to Los Angeles as a teenager. He is predeceased by his parents, Jack and Dora (Lieberman): wife, Carrie (Friedman); in-laws, William and Fanny Friedman, sister, Ruth (Silver). He is survived by daughters, Sheri (Michael) Marion and Cathy (Robert) Greenly, grandchildren, Josh Greenly, Darren Greenly, Melissa (Jason) Mitchell and Freddy Krems, great grandchild, Harley Mitchell, siblings Jerry (Silvia) Hodes, Morrie (Sherry) Hodes, Renee (Mel) Ozur and many nieces and nephews. Sam fought a courageous battle with multiple myeloma and lung cancer. In lieu of flowers, please send donations to the Tower Cancer Research Foundation … or the Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation of America …
Published in the Los Angeles Times from Jan. 29 to Feb. 3, 2013

Since we are long-term subscribers to the Los Angeles Times and I’m an avid reader of obituaries, I might actually have seen this. But I didn’t know him so nothing registered for me. But this obituary confirmed who his wife and in-laws were. Better than that, it gave me the names of two daughters, Sheri and Cathy.

I figured I’d focus on the first one first. It was a logical progression. So that sent me looking for Sheri, married to a Michael MARION. By Googling I found a wonderful love story about the two people who had once known each other in their teen years, but eventually married others, only to find each other so many years later. Anyone can read their “Love Story” as entitled in the Arizona Republic newspaper, in this link: http://archive.azcentral.com/families/articles/0214fam_lovestory.html.

So now I knew they were living in Scottsdale, Arizona. Not so far away from where she grew up, but I needed a phone number or e-mail to contact her. That turned out to be the most difficult part in all of this process.

I do not subscribe to any of the various on-line services that provide all vital information such as telephone numbers and e-mails, police records, and so forth. Why should I? I’m not a private investigator and otherwise rarely would have a need to spend money to find out these things. So I rely on Google and my own sleuthing abilities. It’s more challenging that way and that’s why trying to find a phone number on my own was more difficult. Because daughter Sheri had been married before, I thought I might have luck locating husband Michael MARION, since a man, whether divorced or not, generally retained his family name. So I did find him on a LinkedIn website, as having a business called Marion Consulting, which had an office in Orange County. That seemed a little strange if he was living in Arizona. But from there I had an OC phone number and gave that a call. A pleasant voice of (presumably) a young man named Josh, answered the phone. I briefly told him I was trying locate a Michael Marion, because I had found something that belonged to his late mother-in-law and wanted to return it. Josh said,

“It can’t be him. His mother-in-law is still alive.”

Hmm, I thought, can there be two Michael Marions?

So I had to try something different. That “Love Story” said that Sheri was a “magazine lady.” So I tried Googling with that information. Sure enough, there she was on LinkedIn also!

I loved the description she had provided of her business and as President of her company, called “The Magazine Company, Inc.” Here’s what it said:

“Customer service is so important to me. I like when I get to talk to a REAL person on the phone and not a tape telling you to push this and that! If you call you will ALWAYS talk with me or I will call you back within 24 hrs (or call my cell)

I love speaking with my clients!! I like to find out what exactly what types of magazines they are looking for for thier (sic) clients.

I LOVE being THE MAGAZINE LADY!!!”

You can tell she loved exclamation marks also. So she had a business, but on LinkedIn there was no phone number, so I tried searching for her business. At the time of my search I came up with a website on Connect 6 that strangely had no telephone number. What kind of business has no telephone number listed? Yet, she says she loves to speak with her clients.

I was not ready to give up. Maybe my searches were not the best. Googling can yield different results at different times and with slight variations in what you put in the search field. However, somehow I wound up with a very strange connection to her cell phone number. There are websites where you can check if a telephone number is bogus, a scam, or from a robocall — a so-called computerized auto-dialer. Sometimes you just put in a number and see what others have to report about a particular number or unwanted calls. Try it yourself.

Anyway, possibly as a result of misdial a few years ago, an annoyed person on the other end, identified as AJ, reported a phone number as being from a telemarketer,

“Did you get a call from 480-332-1613? Read the posts below to find out details about this number. Also report unwanted calls to help identify who is using this phone number.

From AJ, 30 Jun 2012,

A call from a female who says “my name is Sherry Marion(?) I need some information; call me back at 480-332-1613.” Caller ID for 480-659-1722 (this is the number the phone call came in on) says “Magazine Lady”. Caller ID for 480-332-1613 is Tmobile cell phone. Both numbers are listed as Phoenix, Arizona. A business calling a business on a Saturday afternoon in the summer?

Yikes, lady, get a life.

Caller: Magazine Lady
Call Type: Telemarketer”

Well, this was certainly an unusual way to find a phone number, but I decided to use it, and bulls-eye! I had found my target.

I reached Sheri and related to her that I had found this set of books with the precious content and how I wanted to ensure it was returned to a family member. I think she was just totally surprised by this finding. She said her sister, Cathy, lived in the vicinity of the SWC. Sheri herself was also going to be traveling the next day to visit her daughter and grandchildren in the LA area and she wanted to meet with me and of course, retrieve the books. She was also going to talk to her sister.

As it turned out, the sisters could not come the next day (Wednesday) but we did arrange to meet Thursday morning. I decided to photograph the books and also look through each one, just in case I might find some other things of interest to share with them.

In the first book of the set, Breishit, or Genesis in English, the meaning being, “In the Beginning,” might have been the right place to inscribe births, the beginning of a new life. But what should we make of an apparent colorful rubber stamp of a ship? It appeared to have three smokestacks and what looked like Union Jack flags of England. It was a curious thing to investigate. It was certainly strange to find such an item in a book of the Torah. It was definitely not Noah’s ark.

In the third book, on the inside flyleaf, I found the Hebrew signature of Wolf FRIEDMAN, Brussels. Why the third book? That was the book of Vayikra, or Leviticus in English. I hypothesized, that since the word Vayikra translates as “and he called,” maybe he took this as the place for his name, somewhat paraphrasing to “he was called.” It was just a thought and may have been a totally random choice. After all, the covers of the books already had his name and place imprinted in gold. Finally, I wanted to look at the oval rubber stamp at the top left of the page.

3 December 2015

Not quite two complete days after my find, on a bright sunny Thursday morning, the two sisters, Sheri and Cathy Greenly (a successful real estate broker) arrived. I had prepared and printed out for them my paper trail of how I managed to track them down. Sheri wondered why I hadn’t looked for Cathy, but I explained Sheri was listed first. I suppose if I hadn’t succeeded in locating her, eventually I would have looked for Cathy.

Sheri didn’t know how I had found her cell-phone number and I kept her in the dark until she came in person. I hadn’t wanted her to feel bad that someone had reported her phone number as a telemarketer. So having kept Sheri intrigued about that find, I was able to show her the print-out.

She was about to tell me about that love story of her and Michael, and how they reunited, but I stopped her. “I know all about that already. It helped me find you!” As for Michael Marion’s business, she said that that OC company was his after all! I guess Josh wasn’t up to date as to his boss’s personal details. I could have cut my research a lot shorter…

I explained how I had found the books on a date corresponding to what would have been exactly their mother’s 85th birthday – I had sort of “resurrected” her for them, by returning these.

Cathy explained that “BREUGMAN” was the name of the hospital their mother was born in.

In addition to that special fact-filled page, I asked them “Do you know anything about that ship image?” They had no clue.

Sheri and Cathy were delighted to have this treasure back and then worried about what other items they might have inadvertently donated, unaware of any intrinsic value. I asked Cathy, who seemed to have kept more of the family memorabilia, if she could send me a photo of the “players” in this story and she promised to follow-up.

 

I told them how I wanted to write this story up and with their permission to possibly publish it on-line and I promised to send them my write-up so they could approve or correct anything that I might have misrepresented. It was only fair.

I asked my husband to take a photo of us to conclude the handover process. And just before they left, Sheri showed me her silver bracelet with a single charm that dangled from her wrist, that reads, “EVERYTHING HAPPENS FOR A REASON.” I couldn’t have thought of a better ending to this episode myself!

Post Scripts

1. Figures 9 and 10 are photos sent to me by Cathy Greenly.

2. Googling after the fact, it is now much easier to locate Sheri Marion, the Magazine Lady, complete with three phone numbers, including a toll-free number, at http://www.mag-lady.com/ Sheri cautions to make sure you use the toll-free 888 rather than 800 or you’ll wind up with a porn number!

3. Sheri is NOT a telemarketer. Her clients are places like medical or dental offices that strive to have a variety of magazines to entertain waiting patients until they are seen.

4. That ship intrigued me, so I researched some more and learned that the family were fortunate to have left Brussels in early 1939, boarding the ship, the SS Normandie, in Le Havre, France, and arriving in New York, February 2, 1939. On Wikipedia, I found out more about the ship. Like that image in the book, it did have three smoke-stacks, but it was a French-built ship and not British. So why that image is there is a mystery, unless it was just something close or reminiscent of the ship they had traveled on. How it got there, we’ll never know.

5. As for the oval rubber stamp on the opposite corner, it appears to be that of the bookseller. What I could make out, translated, looks like:

SKLAD SEFORIM

Bookbindery
Moshe Mordechai Singer
Bendin Shul Gasse

I thought that the last line implied that it was located on the street of the Benzdin Shul. But where was that? In Belgium? Or, more probably in Poland. I was curious to find out.

6. The set of chumashim was printed in Warsaw, 1928. Since the FRIEDMANs married at the end of 1925, the story of Wolf’s father, Mendel, giving it to him prior to marriage doesn’t make sense. The covers of the books have the name WOLF FRIEDMAN BRUSSEL (in Hebrew) imprinted in gold. Several possibilities came to my mind:

a. Wolf’s father Mendel, ordered the books and sent them to his son, between 1928-1930. Maybe sometime in early 1930 when a grandchild was soon to be born, because Wolf entered the birth of his daughter in the back of Breishit, and she was born 9 Dec. 1930.

b. Wolf ordered the set from Bendin, himself.

c. Wolf bought them in Brussels, although I didn’t think they had a street name like that in Brussels.

7. I actually found more on the bookseller, Moshe Mordechai SINGER. Using JewishGen’s Jewish On-line World Burial Registry (JOWBR) I located his tombstone in Bendin/Bedzin, Poland, in the Czeladz-Bedzin Cemetery, although the family name was transliterated as ZINGER. The Hebrew letter for the beginning of his name is a Zayin, so sometimes in different countries in Europe it could be pronounced as a Z or an S. Same name really. The stone, entirely in Hebrew has the embellishment at the top of the engravings of two books. Nice touch symbolizing his profession. He died January 1933. I copied and included the tombstone photo here.

8. Had I gone straight to finding the FRIEDMAN’s passenger record of arrival in 1939, I would have found that Faijgla/Fannie had actually been born In Bendin also. She might have known this bookseller from there and advised father-in-law or husband from whom to buy the set. Pure speculation.

In Conclusion

Researching people or trying to locate individuals is generally not a straight-forward progression. It has to be approached from many angles, and often from different starting points. We will never know the whole story about people or families, but we can pick up the trail of Hansel-and-Gretel crumbs that were unintentionally left behind.