Tag Archives: goldschlager

The Magic of Old Photos and Modern Technology: Memories of Parkchester

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While I am on the subject of old photographs, I wanted to share a heartwarming story that started with one old  photograph.

The photo was one I found mixed in with a bunch of old black and white photographs that had been my parents. I could immediately identify my very young parents in the photo. My mother is the woman in the back with the sleeveless white top. Standing behind her, the man in the suit and tie with dark hair is my father. When I looked more closely at the photo, I realized that my grandmother, Gussie Brotman Goldschlager, is standing to the left of my mother (on my mother’s right), and then all the way in the back left corner almost at the door with only his eyes and nose showing is my grandfather, Isadore Goldschlager.

Who are these people??

But I did not recognize one other person in the photo. Who were all those people with my parents and grandparents? I had no one to ask since my grandparents and my parents are no longer living, nor are any of their peers. But I was determined to try and find out. First I distributed the photo by email to all my Goldschlager and Brotman relatives. Did anyone recognize anyone in the photo? No one did. These did not appear to be my relatives.

I then had what turned out to be a brilliant idea. My grandparents and my parents all lived in Parkchester, a community of apartment buildings in the Bronx that was built in the early 1940s. My mother and her parents had moved there when she was about eleven in 1941 or 1942. Then after my parents married in 1951, my parents had an apartment there also. It was my first home. I hypothesized that the photograph might have been taken in Parkchester in the early 1950s. We moved away in 1957, and my parents looked really, really young here—it may have been taken even before I was born in 1952.

I searched to see if there was a Facebook group for people who once lived in Parkchester, and sure enough, there is one. I posted the photograph there, saying that the photograph was probably taken in the early 1950s and asking if anyone recognized anyone in the photograph. I received numerous comments about living in Parkchester in those years, but no one knew anyone in the photo.

Until, that is, a woman named Gail (Lipman) Amsterdam responded and said that her grandparents, her father, and several other people she knew were in the photograph. And even more incredible—she herself was the little girl sitting on the floor in the front of the photograph. I was totally blown away. Gail is sitting on her grandmother’s lap, and her grandfather is sitting behind her. Gail’s father, Sid Lipman, is the man in the center with the glasses. We assume that her mother either took the picture or was in the kitchen when it was taken.

I learned that Gail had lived in the same building and on the same floor as my grandparents when she was a little girl and that she remembers them. She described them as kind and lovely people. And even more amazing—she remembers my grandparents’ cat and described him perfectly! She even remembers that his name was Rajah. She told me that my grandmother used to let her “borrow” Rajah and take him back to her apartment to play with her. I had a serious case of chills and tears as I read the email in which she shared this with me.  Here was someone I never met who remembered my grandparents and Rajah, who eventually became our cat when my grandmother no longer could care for him. It felt magical.

Rajah (cleverly misspelled by me at ten years old!)

Then I asked Gail about the other people in the photograph. She identified everyone else except for one woman. I told her that I was going to try and locate any relatives of those people because they also might enjoy seeing the photo. Gail said that all the people she knew in the photograph were deceased and that as far as she knew there were no living descendants. One couple did have a son, but in researching the family, I learned that that son had died in the last few years and had had no children or spouse who survived him.

As for the other three adults in the photo, one was Gail’s mother’s best friend, Helen Frankenstein Kaiserman (the woman holding Gail’s doll on her lap), and the two men standing on the right in the rear were Helen’s brothers Morris and Jerome Frankenstein. According to Gail, none of those three had children. Helen had been briefly married but was divorced by the time Gail knew her, and Gail believed that Jerome and Morris had never married.

But I was curious to learn more about the three siblings—Morris, Jerome, and Helen. I just couldn’t accept that there were no living relatives in this family. I turned to Ancestry and began to research the family and soon found them on the 1930 and 1940 census along with their parents and two other siblings. Maybe the other siblings had had children who might be interested in the photo?

In the course of doing that research, however, I stumbled upon an Ancestry tree that had Morris, Jerome, and Helen included. That tree was owned by a researcher named Renate Valencia, and I was surprised to see that according to her tree, Morris had married and had had children. Since his widow and children were still living, their names did not show up on the tree, so I decided to send Renate a message through Ancestry to learn more.

I didn’t have to wait long to hear from her. She was very excited to hear about the photograph and knew that her husband Steve, Morris’ son, would be delighted to see a photograph of his father, uncle, and aunt. Gail was surprised and happy to learn that in fact Morris had married and had had children. I connected Gail and Renate to each other, and they have been exchanging memories and asking and answering questions about the people in the photograph.

Renate sent me this link to a documentary about Parkchester, and it brought back many memories of visiting my grandmother there, going to Macy’s, playing in the playgrounds, chasing pigeons near the fountain, and taking the bright red elevator up to my grandmother’s apartment where once upon a time Gail had lived across the hall. Gail and I may have even ridden in that elevator at the same time, not knowing that all these years later we would connect through the magic of the internet and an old photograph.

All of this would never have been possible without the magic of photographs and the tricks of the internet. Without Facebook and Ancestry, I never would have found Gail or Renate. I never would have learned about the people in that photograph. Now I just wish that I could tell my parents and my grandparents this story and learn more about their memories of that evening and of the people in the photograph.

Can you imagine what all those people in the photograph would think if they knew that seventy or so years after that photograph was taken, three strangers would spend time remembering them all and sharing a magical experience like this? I still get the chills and a bit teary when I think about it.

Florence Goldschlager Cohen: A Life Filled with Love

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Thank you to everyone who commented or emailed or texted me to express their condolences regarding the loss of my mother. I am deeply grateful to you all for your support during this difficult time. I hope to be back to regular blogging soon.

I wanted to share a little more about my mother’s life. She was born on October 15, 1930, in Brooklyn, New York. She was the third child of my maternal grandparents, Isadore Goldschlager and Gussie Brotman, whose stories were told in my family history novel, Pacific Street. My mother Florence was twelve years younger than her brother Maurice and thirteen years younger than her sister Elaine and so was very much the baby in the family. Her family lived in a small four unit building in the East Flatbush section of Brooklyn at 1010 Rutland Road. My grandfather was a milkman whose route was overnight and whose earnings were limited, although my mother said she never felt poor. There was always good food on the table and a roof over their heads.

Goldschlagers 1931

My mother loved growing up in Brooklyn. Her best friend Beatty lived in the building, and as I wrote about here,  I was able to reconnect my mother and Beatty about six years ago after they’d been out of touch for seventy years.

My mother was a good student although being left-handed back then meant that the teachers tried to force her to write with her right hand. But she was too left-dominant for that. She was a voracious reader from a young age and visited the local library in Brooklyn often to borrow books.

Florence and Elaine Goldschlager

When she was eleven, her parents decided to move to a new apartment complex in the Bronx called Parkchester where my aunt had moved after she got married. My mother was devastated to leave behind her friends especially Beatty and her beloved dog Sparky.

Beatty and my mother c. 1940

But she adjusted to life in the Bronx and made new friends and graduated from high school in 1948.

Florence Goldschlager 1948

Two years later she met my father at a Jewish singles camp, as I described here. They were married in 1951 in New York and had a long and happy marriage until my father died in 2019.

Florence and John Cohen 1951

My mother was a stay-at-home mom until 1965 when she decided to get a job as a teacher’s aide in the local elementary school. Because she proved to be so skilled as a teacher, she soon moved up to be a resource room teacher working with children with different learning styles and challenges. She was a devoted, well-respected, and beloved educator for many years, and even after she retired from full-time teaching, she continued to tutor children for most of the rest of her life.

She had many interests and never stopped loving books as well as theater, music, travel, knitting, cooking, gardening, Cape Cod, and especially animals. She was absolutely crazy about dogs and cats, and our home was always filled with both. She had a wonderful sense of humor and incredible taste in clothes, decor, food, and art.

But perhaps the most important thing I can say about my mother is that she was an unbelievably kind, loving, and compassionate woman—especially to her family, but also to her students, her colleagues, her friends, and everyone who ever had the good fortune of spending any time with her. I know I will keep her close to my heart for the rest of my life.

You can learn more about my mother and her life in her obituary found here.

Ny mother and me, c. 1954

My Mother

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To my readers.

I will be taking some time off from blogging. My mother died on Friday, February 11, 2022, and I need to take care of myself and my family. I will likely post something soon about my mother, but for now I leave you with a few photos of my beautiful, wonderful, beloved mother. I already miss her more than I can express.

Thanks for your support.

Amy

Florence Goldschlager 1931

Florence Goldschlager, c. 1944

Florence and John Cohen 1951

 

My mother and me, c. 1954

My parents

 

 

The Magic of Color

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Val Erde of the Colouring the Past blog recently sent out an invitation to bloggers to try her colorization services for free. I’d seen what she did for Luanne of The Family Kalamazoo and so was intrigued by her offer. Under the terms of her invitation, she would select an appropriate black and white photograph, and if I approved of her choice, she would colorize it.

Val selected a wonderful photograph of my great-aunt Betty Goldschlager Feuerstein, my grandfather’s little sister. I asked Betty’s grandchildren if they were comfortable with having the photograph colorized, and those who responded were also intrigued. When I received Val’s finished work and shared it with them, the granddaughters all were thrilled and said that Val had brought their grandmother back to life. Unfortunately I never met Betty, but I also can see what a great job Val did.

Here is the original and Val’s rendition in color:

Betty Goldschlager Feuerstein

betty-goldschlager 1st Draft

Colorized by Val Erde 2019

Pretty remarkable, isn’t it? Val will be available to respond to any questions or comments posted in connection with this post.

Interview on Pioneer Valley Radio

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I was recently interviewed by Bernadette Duncan on Pioneer Valley Radio about my novel Pacific Street and about genealogy research in general. I hope you find it interesting.

You can find it here.

pacific street

You can buy my book here.

Earliest Memories

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Before I return to the other children of my three-times great-uncle Abraham Goldsmith, one more post inspired indirectly by his son Milton.

My final post about Milton referred to the comment in his 1957 obituary in the Philadelphia Jewish Exponent that Milton remembered when Abraham Lincoln was assassinated in 1865. I noted that Milton was only four years old at that time. One of my readers commented that he also could remember a traumatic event from when he was four, and another reader shared her first memory from when she was two and a half. That made me think about the first specific event that I can remember in my own life. I have earlier vague memories, but this is the first clear memory of an event.

I was almost three years old at the time, and my family was spending the summer near Mahopac, New York, on a pond called Long Pond. My aunt and uncle were also there, as were my grandparents. We went to Long Pond for three summers when I was very young. My father and my uncle would return to New York City during the week for work and then come back to Long Pond on weekends. I learned to swim at Long Pond, and I mostly have very vague sense-memories of the place, reinforced by photographs and my uncle’s old home movies.

My mother, me and and my aunt summer 1953 at Long Pond

My cousin Jeff, my father, and me, Long Pond 1954

summer 1955 at Long Pond

 

But the one specific event that I remember very clearly from that third summer at Long Pond was the evening I followed my cousin Jeffrey into the woods. Jeff, who was nine that summer, was my childhood idol. He was six years older than I was and the oldest of the first cousins, all of whom adored him. I have written about Jeff before, here and here, for example. He was smart and funny and lovable; he could always make us all laugh.  My entire family was heartbroken when Jeff died from cancer fourteen years ago.

Jeff and me, 1955

That summer at Long Pond, Jeff was friendly with another boy his age whose family was also staying at Long Pond. I can’t remember that boy’s name, but for simplicity’s sake, let’s call him Joe. Joe had a younger brother who was about six. Let’s call him Sam. One evening after dinner, Jeff and Joe decided to take a walk in the woods near our cabins. I wanted to go with them. I remember Jeff very pointedly telling me that I was too little and that I could not come with them. I was hurt and sad and probably made a stink, but Jeff and Joe wandered off, leaving me behind with Sam, Joe’s six year old little brother.

Then Sam said that we could follow Jeff and Joe, and so off I went, just three years old, following a six year old after two nine year olds. (This was in the days before helicopter parenting.) Before too long, I tripped over a log and fell on a sharp piece of glass, cutting my wrist very close to the vein.

I have no real memory of what happened next. Did Jeff coming running back and rescue me? Did my parents hear my screams and coming running to see what happened? All I know is that someone took me to a doctor nearby, who put butterfly clamps on my wound. To this day, I still have a very nasty two-inch scar on my right wrist.

I was never really bothered by the scar, In fact, at times when I was growing up, it helped me differentiate right from left. My mother used to tell me that someday my husband would buy me a wide gold bracelet to cover the scar. But I almost never thought about it as a child, and now I rarely notice it; nor does anyone else.

When I do look at it these days, I feel very fortunate that I avoided what could have been a much more serious injury. But mostly I look at it and remember with love my cousin Jeff. He may only have been nine at the time, but he was right. I was too little to go walking in the woods in the dusky light of summer that evening.

Jeff and me

 

What is your earliest memory? How old were you?

 

A Review of My Novel, Pacific Street

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I am very honored and flattered that Luanne Castle, who writes the wonderful genealogy blog The Family Kalamazoo and is a published poet as well, has chosen to blog about my novel Pacific Street.  I hope you will read her review and consider purchasing a copy of the book.  Thank you, Luanne!

pacific_street_cover_for_kindle

 

Here is a small excerpt from the review:

The story of Cohen’s grandparents, Isadore and Gussie, is an inspiring coming-to-America tale with all the resonance of actual experience. Cohen has painstakingly documented the early part of her relatives’ lives through historical research using official documents and has incorporated information shared through family stories.

She has researched the settings and cultures described and added her own imagination to infuse the book with appropriate details and descriptions. This is no dry historical telling, but a well-structured adventure full of tragedies and triumphs like a novel, although more accurately, it is creative nonfiction in the historical subgenre. 

As Cohen alternates the narratives of Isadore and Gussie (until their stories merge together near the end), the reader becomes one with the characters. The loneliness of both characters is excruciating, especially since family is so important to both of them.

 

You can read the rest of Luanne’s review here.  Check out the rest of her blog while you are there; she is a wonderful storyteller and an expert genealogist.

Thank you, Luanne! Your words mean a lot!

Pacific Street: Inspired by Facts and Love

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Some of you know that since I retired two and a half years ago, I’ve been working on a novel inspired by my grandparents’ lives and the discoveries I’ve made about them and their extended families through my genealogy research.  Well, I finally put my “pen” down and decided to call it done.

Amy Gussie and Isadore

My grandparents, Gussie Brotman and Isadore Goldschlager, and me

It’s been an exciting process for me because ever since I learned to read, I’ve wanted to write a novel.  All through my career when I was writing long, boring articles for law journals, I wished that instead I was writing a novel. Novels have been my refuge all my life. I love being transported to different times and places and seeing into the hearts and minds of all kinds of characters.  I just wanted a chance to try to create some characters of my own.  When I retired, I promised myself that I would give it a try.

One friend reprimanded me when I said I was trying to write a novel.  She said, “Don’t say that.  Say you are writing a novel.”  I was and am insecure about the whole thing.  I never took a fiction writing course, participated in a writing workshop, or wrote any fiction at all, not since I wrote stories as a young child. What did I know?

My only sources of information about writing a novel were all the novels I’d read starting when I read Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White when I was eight years old.  That book transported me in ways that changed the way I felt about reading.  I cried so hard (spoiler alert) when Charlotte died.  And she was just a spider! A fictional spider! How had the author made her so real and moved me to care so much?

Charlotte's Web

Charlotte’s Web (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Now that I’ve written my own novel, I am even more in awe of the many great authors whose books have moved me so deeply. I am humbled by what those authors were able to do with words, and thus I feel presumptuous trying to promote my own book, despite my friend’s reprimand.

But it was a labor of love—love for family and love for the magic of the written word.  I wrote this book for my children and grandchildren so that they would have a taste of what their ancestors’ lives were like. I had lots of help and inspiration from my family and friends, as I acknowledge at the end of the book.  And so despite this aching feeling of insecurity, I do want to share and promote my book so that others will also know the story I’ve created about my grandparents—grounded in fact, but expanded upon by my imagination.

I hope that you will be tempted to read it.  You can find it on Amazon both as a paperback ($6.99) and as a Kindle ebook ($2.99) at https://www.amazon.com/dp/1541170369

If you do read it, I’d love your feedback.  Thank you!

Fallen Leaves

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I admit that I have been putting off this blog post.  Because it makes me sad.  One of the great gifts I’ve experienced in doing genealogy is learning about and sometimes having conversations with older people whose memories and lives can teach us so much.  The downside of that is that I am catching them in the final chapter in the lives.

In the past year or so, four of my parents’ first cousins have passed away.  I already wrote about my mother’s first cousin, Murray Leonard, born Goldschlager, son of my grandfather’s brother David Goldschlager.  You can see my tribute to Murray here, in case you missed it.

Murray Leonard older

Murray Leonard

Murray Leonard

David and Murray Goldschlager

David and Murray Goldschlager

Two of my mother’s other Goldschlager-side first cousins also died in the last year: Frieda Feuerstein Albert and Estelle Feuerstein Kenner, who were sisters and the daughters of Betty Goldschlager, my grandfather’s sister, and her husband Isidor Feuerstein.

Frieda died on July 30, 2015; she was 93. Frieda was born in New York on April 21, 1922. She married Abram Albert in 1943, and in 1957, they moved with their children to Arizona, where Abram opened a bedspread and drapery store in Phoenix. He died in 1991, and Frieda continued to live in Phoenix until her death last summer.

Frieda and Abe

Frieda and Abe

Frieda and Abe Albert at their wedding in 1943

Frieda and Abe Albert at their wedding in 1943

 

Her younger sister Estelle died almost three months ago on May 16, 2016.  She was 86 years old and had been living in Florida for many years.  She was born May 15, 1929.

 

courtesy of Barry Kenner

courtesy of Barry Kenner

Estelle

Estelle

Estelle Feuerstein, Betty's daughter

Estelle Feuerstein, Betty’s daughter

Estelle and Frieda each had three children who survive them—six second cousins I’d never known about until I started doing genealogy research.

I never had a chance to speak to either Frieda or Estelle, but have been in touch with some of their children.  My mother recalls Frieda and Estelle very well, although she had not seen them for many, many years.  She remembers them as beautiful young girls coming to visit her family in Brooklyn when they were living out on Long Island.

The other cousin who died in the past year was my father’s first cousin, Marjorie Cohen.  I wrote about my wonderful conversations with Marjorie here.  She died on July 6, 2015, but I did not learn about it until quite recently.  She was just a few months shy of 90 when she died, and she was living in Ventnor, New Jersey, near Atlantic City, where she had lived for almost all of her adult life after growing up in Philadelphia.  She was born on October 15, 1925, the daughter of Bessie Craig and Stanley Cohen, my grandfather’s brother.

Arthur Seligman, Marjorie, and Eva May Cohen, 1932 Atlantic City

Arthur Seligman, Marjorie, and Eva May Cohen, 1932 Atlantic City

Marjorie Cohen with Pete-page-001 Marjorie model 2-page-001

According to her obituary,

She was a graduate of the Sacred Heart School in Philadelphia and Trinity College in Washington, DC. For 33 years she served as the Director of the AAA Mid-Atlantic Travel Agency in Northfield. During her time with AAA she escorted both cruises and tours throughout the world. In 1978, she was the recipient of the Contemporary Woman of the Year Award for outstanding community involvement by McDonald’s Restaurant and radio station WAYV. Upon retirement she became actively involved in volunteer work with the Atlantic City Medical Center, RNS Cancer and Heart Organization, the LPGA Annual Golf Tournament and served as a Hostess with the Miss America Pageant for a number of years. Throughout her life, she had a deep and abiding love for all animals and was a generous supporter of the Humane Society.  (Press of Atlantic City, July 9, 2015.)

I am so grateful that I had the chance to talk to Marjorie, and I am filled with regret that I never was able to get to Atlantic City to meet with her as I had hoped.

These losses remind me once again how important it is to find my extended family members, especially those whose memories run back the longest.  I wish I had had the chance to meet all of these cousins, and now it is too late.

 

 

In Memory of Murray Leonard: May 4, 1922-March 27, 2016

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Murray Leonard

Murray Leonard

My second cousin Richard Leonard contacted me to let me know that his father, Murray Leonard (born Murray Leonard Goldschlager) had passed away on March 27, 2016, in Tucson, Arizona.  Murray was my mother’s first cousin.  He was the son of David Goldschlager, my grandfather’s younger brother, and Rebecca Schwarz.  He was named for his grandfather, my great-grandfather Moritz Lieb Goldschlager, and shared the same Hebrew name with his first cousin, my uncle Maurice Goldschlager.

I never had the chance to meet Murray, but I know from Richard how well loved he was.  With Richard’s permission, I am quoting from Murray’s obituary and Richard’s own personal tribute:

Murray Leonard, 93, of Tucson, Arizona, passed away peacefully on March 27th 2016. He was born in Scranton, Pennsylvania on May 4th 1922.

Murray grew up in The Bronx, following all the NY Yankee greats.

David Rebecca Sidney and Murray at Brighton Beach

Murray, Sidney, Rebecca and David Goldschlager at Brighton Beach

David and Murray Goldschlager

David and Murray Leonard Goldschlager

 

When World War Two broke out he answered his country’s call to duty as a PFC in the US Army (83rd Reconnaissance Troup, 83rd Division), participating in the Battle of the Bulge, sustaining injuries and was awarded a Purple Heart.

Ancestry.com. U.S., WWII Jewish Servicemen Cards, 1942-1947 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc. Original data: Alphabetical Master Cards, 1942–1947; Series VI, Card Files—Bureau of War Records, Master Index Cards, 1943–1947; National Jewish Welfare Board, Bureau of War Records, 1940–1969; I-52; boxes 273–362. New York, New York: American Jewish Historical Society, Center for Jewish History.

Ancestry.com. U.S., WWII Jewish Servicemen Cards, 1942-1947 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc.
Original data: Alphabetical Master Cards, 1942–1947; Series VI, Card Files—Bureau of War Records, Master Index Cards, 1943–1947; National Jewish Welfare Board, Bureau of War Records, 1940–1969; I-52; boxes 273–362. New York, New York: American Jewish Historical Society, Center for Jewish History.

After getting married to the love of his life Edna in 1958, he moved to Tucson, Arizona to pursue a career in the mail-order and retail women’s clothing business with his wife at Old Pueblo Traders and the Vicki Wayne retail stores, retiring at the age of 78.   

He was a keen golfer and enjoyed playing with his buddies as part of the ‘Grumpy Old Men” golfing group, playing until he was 87. He also enjoyed playing the US stock market/investing mostly on his own, including reading the Wall Street Journal every day.

Murray_Leonard_Lacey_Busby_Hadwin_Layla_Hadwin_11_JAN_2014

Murray Leonard

 

He is survived by a son, Richard (Stephanie) and loving wife of 57 years, Edna Leonard. He was preceded in death by his brother Sidney Goldschlager (Nora) of Rumson, New Jersey and parents, David and Rebecca Goldschlager, who immigrated to the US [from] Iași, Romania. He is also lovingly remembered by all his nieces and nephews as fun-loving “Uncle Mursh”, who would do anything for a laugh.

Richard wrote:

He was a fantastic father, patriotic American and overall great guy. He heeded his country’s call to duty fighting in WWII, seeing combat action in the Battle of the Bulge (getting wounded and was awarded a Purple Heart). A successful businessman retiring at the age of 78, he also was a keen golfer, playing until he was 87. He will be certainly missed but the great memories will always remain! Time to toast him with a Tanqueray & Tonic, his favorite drink!

I will be sure to have that Tanqueray & Tonic in his memory and will think of my cousin Murray, the son of Romanian immigrants who grew up to live the life his parents must have dreamed for him: a long and happy marriage and a loving son, a successful business, and dedicated service to the country that his parents had adopted as their own when coming here as young adults in the early 20th century.

May his memory be for a blessing, and may his family be comforted by their memories.

Murray Leonard older