Mamma mia! My mother was an Aryan!

It's true! But it's not what you may be thinking. She was Jewish. How can this be?

I will tell you.

Poking around on the internet can prove very interesting. I found the college yearbook for the year my mother graduated from West Chester (Pa.) State Teachers College. Her photo appeared on page 114 of the 1930 edition of The Serpentine, West Chester's yearbook.

And right there, next to her photo, was this description:

RUTH ELIZABETH SILBERMAN
"Rufus"
234 Wyncote Road, Jenkintown, Pa.
PRIMARY - ARYAN
Swimming; Bowling; Y.W.C.A.; Montgomery County Club; Student Teachers' Club of Chester; Archery.

I know for a fact that the list of her activities is incomplete, because among her souvenirs I found a pin from the Mask and Wig Players, the college's drama club.

Seeing Y.W.C.A. (Young Women's Christian Association) is a little surprising considering that she was Jewish, but it probably had something to do with another of her activities, swimming,

I never heard anyone call my mother "Rufus" but apparently her college friends did. I do remember both her brother and her sister calling her "Ruthie Puthie" or "Roothie Poothie" or however it is spelled. No matter. She was "Mama" to me.

PRIMARY indicates that her major at the State Teachers College was primary education. She wanted to teach young children. Clear enough.

That leaves ARYAN, which almost made me drop my teeth.

Really? ARYAN?? As in white supremacists and Nazis and the like?

Absolutely not.

A little more poking around revealed that there were several literary societies at West Chester, and the one my mother belonged to happened to be called ARYAN. There was another called HERODOTUS, and there were others. These clubs had existed at the college for many years, long before the unfortunate turn of events in the world that gave the word an entirely different meaning. Actually, it originally meant "noble" in the ancient Vedic literature of India. If you want to learn more about Aryans, click here. If not, we stand adjourned until the next regular session.

page 114 of 1930 Serpentine

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away...

Today is my mother's birthday. Ruth Elizabeth Silberman Brague would have been 107 years old today.

Unfortunately, she died at the age of 47 when I was but 16. I am going to show you a few photographs of her from long before I entered the picture. I was born in 1941, a month before her 31st birthday. These pictures are all from the 1920s and 1930s. I do not have specific dates for any of them.

In my all-time favorite picture of her, taken around the time she graduated from West Chester State College in 1930, she wore a black dress and a long necklace made of what looked like mahjongg tiles linked together. It has somehow managed to become lost. This one was taken a few years later: :



Here she is with her mother and sister:


Here she is with her brother Jack. He called her Roothie-Poothie. He became Dr. J. DeWolf Silberman, M.D., and set up practice in Lebanon County, Pennsylvania:


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


And here she is with her parents, my grandparents, Rosetta and Nathan Silberman, possibly on the boardwalk in Atlantic City:


Long-time readers of this blog may remember some of these photos as I included them in posts in 2010 and 2013, ancient history as time is counted in the blogging world.

Some years ago I wrote the following sonnet. I was remembering two small oval-framed photographs of my mother's grandparents, Max and Sarah Nussbaum Silberman, taken around the turn of the twentieth century, that I once saw in my uncle's house. I wish I could show them to you as well, but I cannot. Perhaps you will think of some old photographs of your own relatives as you read it.

On Being Shown a Photograph of an Ancestor
by Robert H. Brague

Those things speak most that never say a word,
Like eyes that meet on streets when strangers pass;
The loudest cries so often go unheard,
Like silent prayers reflected in a glass.
Though never have we spoken, there’s a bond
That shatters my veneer, my thin disguise;
You look beneath the surface and beyond,
And all of time is frozen in your eyes.
Departed generations in between,
Like links of chain from viewer to the viewed,
Peer over Heaven’s edge, survey the scene,
Hold their collective breaths, and don’t intrude.
While thoughts of love, and death, and DNA
Swirl through my brain, they bow their heads and pray.

What is so rare as a day in June?

Above is a photograph of the sophomore class of Jenkintown High School, Jenkintown, Pennsylvania, from the 1926 JHS yearbook. In other words, this is the Class of 1928 when they were in the tenth grade. (For non-U.S. readers, high school covers four years, grades 9 through 12, and the classes are known as freshmen, sophomores, juniors, and seniors.) The photograph also appeared as the illustration for the month of June in a 1975 pictorial Centennial Calendar that was issued to commemorate the first one hundred years of the Jenkintown School District.

Jenkintown, a Philadelphia suburb in Montgomery County, came into being around 1790. I have no idea how Jenkintown educated its youth prior to 1875. My guess is there probably was a school, but not an official School District.

An aunt who lived in Jenkintown sent me one of the calendars when it was published, but I managed to lose track of it over the years, helped along by several family moves. About a year ago, thanks to the internet, I was able to obtain another copy from the Old York Road Historical Society for six dollars.

I was very happy to get it, too, because in the front row, third from the left, the girl wearing the dark dress is my mother, Ruth Silberman, eighty-five years ago, at age 16.

If you click on the photograph you will see the people's faces better and be able to read their names. I remember hearing my mother speak of her friends Jeannette Creamer (pronounced KRAY-mer, first row, fourth from left), Helen Keiser (second row, third from left), and Norman Land (back row, fourth from left). Norman later worked at the U.S. Post Office in Jenkintown, and I met him there on a trip to Jenkintown from Texas with my mother in 1955 when I was 14.

In my next post, I shall show you something even rarer than a day in June.