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.

More treasures from my family album

In my previous post, I reprinted two poems that were favorites of my mother. In another recent post entitled “When did March 20th become the first day of spring?” I told you about my grandfather, Nathan Silberman (1875-1970) and showed you a photo of him with my mother and grandmother in the late 1920s or early 1930s, as well as one of him at the age of 71 in 1946.

Today I want to show you a few more treasures from my family album.


These are the women in Nathan Silberman’s life. On the left is his youngest daughter, my mother, Ruth Elizabeth Silberman (1910-1957). In the center is his wife, my grandmother, Rosetta Aarons Silberman (1878-1937). On the right is his firstborn child, my mother’s older sister, my aunt Marion Silberman (1899-1987). The photo may have been taken at West Chester State College where my mother received her teaching certificate in 1930, or it may have been taken in front of the family home on Wyncote Road in Jenkintown, Pennsylvania. If it was taken around 1930, my mother would have been about 20, my aunt about 31, and my grandmother about 52.


Here is my mother with her older brother, my uncle Jack (1907-1987), who was better known in Lebanon County, Pennsylvania, as Dr. J. DeWolf Silberman, M.D. He graduated from Hahneman University’s Medical School in Philadelphia and practiced in the small town of Annville in Lebanon County for many years. In this photo he may have recently moved to Annville. He married the nurse from Pittsburgh who worked with him, my Aunt Ruth Michaels Silberman (1908-1976). They had one son, my cousin, Jack, Jr. (1934- ).


Here are my mother and her sister in the early or mid-1930s, probably after my Aunt Marion had moved to New York City and married my Uncle Ferdy. They had one son, my cousin Philip, who became Dr. Philip F. Caracena (1935- ).

I do not have a photo of my mother’s other brother, my Uncle Sol Silberman (1903-1989). He lived in Jenkintown his entire life. He and my Aunt Naomi Salus Silberman (1907-1984) had two daughters, my cousins Joan Lynore Silberman Rush (1932?- ) and Eileen Mae Silberman Stone (1935- ).

Nathan and Rosetta (the 1910 census calls her Rosalie) were married in 1898. Marion came along in 1899, Sol in 1903, Jack in 1907, and my mother in 1910. There was also a daughter, Rachel, who did not survive infancy.

Nathan’s parents were Max Silberman (1846-1914) and Sarah Nusbaum Silberman (1849-1925). Rosetta’s parents were Solomon Aarons (1847-1902) and Rachel DeWolf Aarons (1848-1932).

My great-grandfather Max Silberman opened Silberman’s Department Store in Jenkintown around 1880. I have a photograph of him sitting in front of his store, next to a sign that reads, “Gloves, Suspenders, Knit Jackets, Trimmings, Ladies & Gents Underwear At Wholesale Prices.” Sitting on the curb in front of the store are four young boys, one of whom (I think) is my grandfather. When he became an adult, my grandfather played the clarinet in the Pennsylvania National Guard Band during the Spanish-American War and helped found Jenkintown’s volunteer fire department. He had a real estate and insurance office in Jenkintown for many years that my Uncle Sol ran after my grandfather retired. The office was on West Avenue between the Post Office and the bank at the corner of Old York Road; a sign in the window read, “N. Silberman and Son.”

After having had family members live in the same small town in Pennsylvania for well over one hundred years, not a single member of my family lives there now. We cousins have scattered to the four winds.

[A note of clarification, 3/30/2010, or, if you are British, 30/3/2010: In no way did I mean to imply that by playing the clarinet in the Pennsylvania National Guard Band during the Spanish-American War, my grandfather helped found Jenkintown’s volunteer fire department. No, indeedy. They were two separate and totally unrelated events, and this note would not have been necessary if I had put the word also before the word helped in the sentence in question. Thus do we live and learn. Yours for accuracy and clarity in blogging, I remain, RWP]

When did March 20th become the first day of spring?

Your Honor, I place into the record Exhibit A:


When this photograph was taken, this dapper gentleman was 71 years old. A decade earlier, when he was in his early sixties, the doctors discovered that he had cancer of the colon. They performed a colostomy and told him he had six months to live.

Oh, he lived. He lived for almost 35 more years. He outlived all of his doctors.

Finally, just three months and one day before his 96th birthday, he died on December 20, 1970.

He is Nathan Silberman, my maternal grandfather. He was born in 1875. I am now two years younger than he was when the photo was taken in 1946.

We always said my grandfather was born on the first day of spring. For several decades now the vernal equinox seems to have occurred on March 20th, not March 21st. When it changed, and why it changed, and whether the earth is speeding up or slowing down or merely sliding a little backward or forward in its orbit like a yo-yo on a string or possibly tilting a little more or less on its axis than it used to, I do not know. Perhaps it is related to the reason a leap day was not added in century years 1700, 1800, and 1900 but one was added in 1600 and 2000. I wish someone would explain it to me.

But this I know. Today, March 21st, the real first day of spring, is my grandfather’s birthday. He would be 135.

Your Honor, here is Exhibit B, a photograph of him with my grandmother and my mother around 1930.