Happy birthday, Aunt Marion!

I wish I had a good picture of my Aunt Marion to show you, but apparently the ones I remember have all gone with the wind. Marion Silberman, my mother's eldest sibling, was born on this day in 1899. She was vain about her age and began fibbing and telling people she was born in 1900 so that she wouldn't be associated in any way with the nineteenth century. She continued to lie about her age, and as the years went by, my mother, who was 11 years younger than her sister, actually passed her somewhere along the way. My aunt kept getting younger and younger. This is not to criticize her, I just find it interesting and vaguely amusing. One reason she fibbed about her true age was that as a divorced woman raising a young son in the 1940s she needed to stay in the work force as long as possible. She worked as a legal secretary in suburban Philadelphia.

Marion was born and raised in Jenkintown where her grandfather Max Silberman had opened a dry goods store in the 1870s. Max's parents and his wife Sarah Nusbaum's parents had both come to America from Germany when Max and Sarah were youngsters, and both families had settled in the Philadelphia area. After Max and Sarah married, they attended the same synagogue as Solomon and Rachael (nee DeWolf) Aarons. In the 1890s Max's and Sarah's son Nathan, an only child, married Rosetta Aarons, one of Solomon's and Rachael's daughters. Thus it was that my Aunt Marion was born in 1899, my Uncle Sol in 1903, my Uncle Jack in 1907, and my mother, Ruth, in 1910. All four of the children graduated from Jenkintown High School and eventually three of Nathan's and Rosetta's five grandchilren graduated from Jenkintown High School as well. The Silberman family lived in Jenkintown for more than a hundred years, but today none are left.

Marion, the oldest, moved to New York City to make her fortune (translation: find a job) and eventually married a Spaniard, Fernando Caracena (kara-thayna) who claimed to be descended from Ponce de Leon. Although they produced a son, my cousin Philip, it was a rocky marriage and eventually Uncle Ferdy and Aunt Marion were divorced in 1946, at which time she and Philip returned to Jenkintown. Philip went to Lafayette College in Easton and then to Michigan State for his masters and doctoral degrees. He met his wife, Virginia Burquest, while at Michigan State. She was from Sarasota, Florida. For a while Philip taught at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, then opened a practice in Hammond, Indiana, then in Mt. Prospect, Illinois, then in Colorado Springs, Colorado, and finally in Edmond, Oklahoma, where he died in 2016 at the age of 81. Philip and Virginia had three children, Christopher (who lives in Atlanta), Kurt (who lives in Colorado Springs), and Elise (who lives in Tampa). They all have college-aged children of their own now who are my first cousins, twice removed.

I apologize for the disjointed way in which I am describing my family. It's sort of a "stream of consciousness" style today. I'm writing as things occur to me. I may go back and try to straighten out what may be confusing, but then again I may not.

Genealogy is often a hit-and-miss endeavor, and sometimes Google simply cannot be trusted. One thing that muddies the waters where my Uncle Ferdy and Aunt Marion are concerned is that after they divorced he married another woman named Marian (with an a, not an o). She was Anna Marian Hesson but online searches being what they are, she is sometimes called Anna Marion Hesson (with an o, not an a). I assure you that Marion and Marian were two different people. Marion was Philip's mother. Marian was not.

I was able to look back into my post archives and find two old photographs.

Here, from left to right, are Ruth, Rosetta, and Marion (that is, my mother, my grandmother, and my aunt) around 1930: :


Here is my mother with her sister, probably in New York, before 1940:


Aunt Marion gave me my first camera (a Brownie Hawkeye) and my first portable record player (in a burgundy faux alligator case) when she and Philip visited us in Texas in 1948 and again in 1950, when I was 7 and 9, respectively. Every year on New Year's Eve at 11 pm Texas time, Aunt Marion would call from Pennsylvania to wish us a happy new year. My mother and I visited her family in Pennsylvania in 1954, and on that trip I met my grandfather and my two uncles. My aunt was able to come to Texas for a week in September 1957 and spend time with my mother at the hospital. My mother died on October 4th, a week after her sister had returned home. I visited Pennsylvania again in 1958 just after graduating from high school. On that trip I met Philip's fiancee, Virginia, a couple of months before their marriage. In 1984 while on a business trip to King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, I took my Aunt Marion out to dinner one evening. She passed away in November 1987 at the age of 88 in Abington Hospital, Abington, Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, less than five miles from her birthplace.

Those few occasions were the only times I ever saw my aunt or my cousin, but they occupy places of honor in my memory banks still.

Happy birthday, Aunt Marion!

After janvier comes fevrier, non?

...and fevrier is almost upon us. But before janvier disappears completely, I take the time to remember that today, the 29th day of janvier, is (or was) my Aunt Marion’s birthday.

Aunt Marion was my mother’s older sister. Mama was the youngest of four children; she had two older brothers, and a sister who was eleven years her senior. Mama was born in 1910 and died in 1957. The brothers were born in 1907 and 1904. Aunt Marion, the eldest, was born in 1899 and died in 1987, if memory serves. All of them are gone now.

Somewhere along the way Aunt Marion stopped having birthdays. I remember that my mother passed her at some point.

Two of my most treasured childhood possessions were gifts from my Aunt Marion during two trips she made from Pennsylvania to Texas with my cousin Philip. One was a Brownie Hawkeye camera, a gift of seeing. The other was a three-speed portable turntable (33-1/3, 45, and 78 rpm) in a burgundy, simulated alligator-skin carrying case, a gift of hearing. Both of those trips, by the way, in 1948 and 1950, all the way from Philadelphia to Fort Worth, were by bus. Aunt Marion said when she arrived that she knew why they called the bus company Greyhound -- because you feel like a dog when you get off. I don’t need a calendar to know that January 29th was Aunt Marion’s birthday or that February 27th was Philip’s, or that April 10th was Mama’s and May 12th was Daddy’s.

Some things are forever emblazoned in my brain, and I couldn’t forget them if I tried. And even though the moving finger writes and having writ moves on, all my piety and wit cannot lure it back to cancel half a line, nor all my tears wash out a word of it.

Next time: Water, water, everywhere, nor any drop to drink.