Dedushka Zeyde: The Fantastic, Mysterious Story Of Harry Marshall: Part 3

 By 1924, Harry Marshall is 44 years-old, he has 4 children, by 2 different wives, one who killed herself and one who he has left, but he is by all accounts a wealthy man. He's been in Pittsburgh for nearly 20 years and somehow decides to go back to the "old country" to find himself a new wife. A marriage has been arranged, although the details of how it was actually coordinated are unknown. Perhaps it was through family that still resided in Odessa or Barr, perhaps it was done through a matchmaker... the answers are lost to history. But, he makes the journey back across the world to Moldova, a land sandwiched between Romania and the Ukrainian section of Russia, also called Bessarabia, as part of The Settlement of Pale, where Jews had been forced to settle by the Russian authorities and aristocracy in the latter part of the 19th century. It is here, that Harry finds his prize.

Riva Lia Nussamovich is 24 and a dark haired, dark eyed beauty. Her father and brothers had stables and ran a cartage business (using carts & horses). They have all fought in WWI and possibly the Russian revolution as calvary officers in the Czar's Imperial Army, since they were skilled horsemen. She was apparently in love with a cousin, who she wanted to marry, but her war wounded father told her that if she married him, he would never get out of his bed again. Somehow, he DID agree to allow a man 20 years older than his beloved daughter to marry her and take her away. I can only imagine that there was a large sum of money involved as a "dowry" in such an arrangement.

They stayed in Kishenev (modern day Chisnau), a major center of Moldovan Jewish life and within a year, a daughter, Beila Marshall, my Aunt was born. After a few years, they apparently, grew tired of life in Moldova, and since Harry was an American citizen, he applied for an emergency Bucharest passport/Visa for his 3rd wife and small child and they left to go on a tour of Europe, with an English nanny in tow, to help take care of the girl. And in 1929, they returned to America aboard the Aquitania, which was the sister ship to the Lusitania, sailing from Cherbourg, France and ending up in the west side of Chicago, in the the Lawndale neighborhood, a haven for Eastern European Jews, which had a vibrant Jewish community. Shortly after their arrival, the Great Depression would steal the remaining fortune Harry had left and he would have a series of jobs, one selling slippers at the Maxwell Street market, to make ends meet, while Riva Leia (who had changed her name to Eva upon coming to America), did sewing and embroidery for wealthy ladies in Chicago and the affluent town of Evanston. 

Clearly, Eva must've known about Harry's previous marriages and his other, older children, but I have no idea what contact he had with them, since Chicago was far from Pittsburgh, a long way away from the legacy of bitterness and sadness Harry had left behind there. In later years, my Aunt did meet her half siblings, all of whom seemed to have done well for themselves, despite their absent father. Milton was in the army in WWII, married & had several children of his own, Johanna also served in WWII (as part of the WAACs), and eventually settled in Arizona, Mathilde stayed in Pittsburgh and married a German Jew named Herman Adlersberg and had 2 children, Jay and Lynn (the only still living members of the Marshall clan, besides my father and his 2 nephews). The only one who didn't survive was Benjamin, who's death certificate showed that he died at the age of 24 from a congenital heart problem and septicemia from an infection. 

By all accounts, Eva and Harry did not have the happiest of marriages. And the cousin, who Eva had been in love with, had also come to America, becoming a pharmacist in Philadelpia (who she also visited with my father, when he was very young). In 1939, when my Aunt Belle (the more Americanized version of Beila) was 14, the last of Harry Marshall's progeny, my father Edward Martin Marshall was born. There had been several miscarriages and still births in the intervening years, but at last Harry, at the age of 58, had another son. Interestingly, Eva was 38 at the time, which is considered "advanced maternal age" (and is exactly the same age as I was when I had my daughter). The young teenager Belle and her best friend Silvia Schwartzberg used to push by father around the neighborhood in his stroller, when he was a baby, and feed him french fries, bringing him back home, with his hands and face covered in grease. As she got older, photos show that Belle grew into a stunning beauty, a raven-haired, Jewish version of Rita Hayworth. She was quite smart and artistically talented. And apparently a boy who hassled her was accosted by Harry, who grabbed him by his shirt collar and told him in no uncertain terms to leave his daughter alone (a scene that would be repeated by my own father many years later, by a man who dared to bother my younger sister). And although Harry was protective of his youngest daughter, after graduating high school, he apparently refused to let her attend The School of the Art Institute, which she was offered a scholarship for. I have no doubt that based on his "old world" views, girls weren't worth educating and their true purpose was to get married and be homemakers and mothers.

Meanwhile, Eddie's younger years were somewhat idyllic... He went to school, sporadically attended cheder (Yiddish for Hebrew school) and was later bar mitzvah'd. His grammar school pictures show a devilishly handsome boy with jet black hair and sparkling blue, almond shaped eyes. His yearbook showed that his nickname was "innocent eyes", but he was anything but, having admitted to me that girls like Luba Shlopak let him drop pennies down their blouses. When my father was 5, his older sister Belle got married in the living room of their house. She married a Naval officer named Herb Lapidus, who came from a well-off family in New York and had been stationed at Navy Pier in Chicago during WWII. Belle married him presumably to get away from her father and leave the poverty of the west side of Chicago. They didn't get along at all and she was very embarassed that the family was poor and her father sold slippers on Maxwell Street and did other odd jobs to make ends meet. After Belle left the house to go move back east with her husband, life continued for Eddie, with Harry working and putting up barrels of pickles, beets and sauerkraut in the cellar and Eva keeping the house, doing her sewing and embroidery. They spoke Yiddish at home and when my father was old enough to understand it, they'd switch to Russian. Eva, who spoke Yiddish, Russian and Romanian (having grown up in Moldova, right next to Romania) also learned English once she came to America. Eva Nussamovich Marshall, who probably had NO formal education, spoke FOUR languages! She took night classes at the local library to learn English and my father recalled many hours spent at the library with his mother, which I imagine is how he developed his lifelong love of books and adventure.

But when my father turned 14, his world turned upside down... Eva was diagnosed with cancer, breast cancer to be exact, which had spread to other places in her body, due to the fact that she was poor and couldn't afford good medical care. She languished in the hospital, comforted only by a radio that Belle's friend Sylvia Schwartzberg procured for her. She was given radiation treatment, but just prior to that, she cut off the long, black braids that had always been pinned up on her head and donned a scarf, so as not to scare her son with the change in hairdo (those braids still exist in a carved, wooden box in the bottom of one of my father's desk drawers in his library). On her deathbed, Eva made her daughter Belle promise to take care of her beloved son, Eddie. She agreed and after Eva died, my father was uprooted from everything he knew in Lawndale and sent to Hicksville, New York on Long Island, to live with Belle and Herb Lapidus and their two young sons (my father's nephew's Barry and Todd, who he is actually closer in age to than his older sister). Herb has done well for himself and owned an insurance company, plus some family money and he had made smart investments, so they had a nice, mid-century modern house. Harry Marshall was in his early 70's at this point and clearly unable or unwilling to take care of his teenage son, so he remarried. Who this 4th wife was, I have NO clue, but clearly, he was an old man that needed to be taken care of by a woman, once again.

My father, the rough and tough kid from the west side of Chicago was probably a handful, so after a few years of living with his sister and brother-in-law, it becomes clear that they simply don't want the responsibility anymore. Instead of waiting to let my 17 year-old father graduate from Hicksville high school with a diploma and sending him on his way, which would'veat least sufficed in terms of finding a job and starting a career in 1957, Herb takes him to the local recruiter, so my father can join the military (which he was told would "make a man out of him"). My father chooses the Navy and when he has to sign the papers to list who his beneficiary will be for death benefits if he happens to die in the service of his country, my father lists nobody. The old gunnery seargent processing his paperwork sees his choice says, "Good lad!", then glares at Herb Lapidus, who technically has NO right to turn my father over to the military, since he is a minor and neither Herb nor Belle had ever been made my father's legal guardians, despite the fact that his mother was dead and his father had remarried. 

Luckily, my now "orphaned" father is smart and although he doesn't have a high school diploma, his test results show that he is highly intelligent, which puts him on an officer track into naval aviation versus a more menial job, and he is sent to boot camp in Bainbridge, Maryland, then off to places like Lakehurst, New Jersey (scene of the Hindenburg disaster), Norman, Oklahoma, Corpus Christie, Texas, and finally he is stationed at Norfolk, Virginia, as a parachute rigger in a seaplane squardon, VP44. He is in the Navy at a perfect time, the cold war era, between Korea and Viet Nam. He has joined the Navy, he visits many places in the U.S. as part of his training, and he also gets to go to more exotic locations like Bermuda, where VP44's sister squadron is located, as well as Puerto Rico, where another Naval aviation base exists (along with numerous places for sailors to have a good time with the hot, local Latina girls). My father even jokes that I may have some half brothers and sisters running around the island, which I have never tried to investigate, but it wouldn't surprise me, given the fact that the pictures of my father in uniform with his dark pompadour, intense eyes and smile from that time make him look like he stepped out of a Hollywood movie set. His exotic combination of Ukrainian / Moldovan features must have been pretty irresistable back then, and since I know he didn't drink, gamble or smoke, like most of his felow sailors, he was clearly an absolute ladies man. A fact which was confirmed many years later at a fraternity brother's son's bar mitzvah, in Norfolk, by a woman who was one of the town nafke's (slut in Yiddish), who declared in front of everyone assembled (including me and my mother) that "ALL the girls in Virginia Beach knew Eddie!".

And what will become of the youngest son and sixth child of Harry Marshall?... You have to stay tuned to find out, because there is much more to the story!

Dedushka Zeyde: The Fantastic, Mysterious Story Of Harry Marshall: Part 2

 In the course of my research on my paternal grandfather, I came across a few early facts. He apparently came to the United States in 1905 at the age of 25 and settled in Pittsburgh. How he came to be there was an absolute mystery. His papers had contradictory information, some saying he was from Russia and some saying he was from Barr (perhaps a town called Barr Podolsky in Ukraine?). It's impossible to know where exactly he came from and the information given to my father and his older sister was that Harry came from Odessa. Again, we will never know, since too much time has passed. Harry also claimed that his last name was always Marshall, which would've been highly unlikely as a Jewish man from Odessa. Could the name have been Marshallkovich (a Russian name that was listed in the directory of my mother's cousin's condo building, which was full of old Eastern European folks in the '80's)? Could it have been Marshalik? Moshkovitz? Had it been changed at Ellis Island when he came to America? Had HE changed it to sound less Jewish? I will never know the answer to that question, unfortunately. The only other name that appears on Harry's papers is his father, Morris and again, I have no way of knowing if that was even my great grandfather's real name.

What I do know is that he ended up in Pittsburgh, his profession was listed as a salesman and the rumor/story was that he had taken over his first wife's family business and she ended up killing herself. That last part was both fascinating and horrifying to me. Harry and the mysterious first wife had a son in 1906, named Milton. He was my father's eldest half brother. There is much more about Milton to come later. As I said, the mysterious circumtances of this first wife haunted me... Was it just a rumor and a made up story or did she really exist? Those questions rattled around in my brain for years, until I finally went down a research rabbit hole, looking for more information about Milton, through Ancestry, which led me to another site entirely that led me to the truth... Harry Marshall's first wife HAD existed! Her name was Szeni (Jeni) Bakler and was a Hungarian Jew. She was born in 1885 (how she came to be in Pittshburgh and met my grandfather is another mystery), she had 12 siblings, 2 of which died young, she married Harry in 1905, their son Milton was born in 1906 and she died in 1907 at the age of 23, two years after marrying my grandfather, when her son was a year old. The information I uncovered about her death nearly knocked me off my chair... Her cause of death was listed as carbolic acid poisoning. It was actually a suicide! I couldn't imagine what would drive a person to kill themselves in such a horrible way, since carbolic acid (phenol) is highly corrosive and causes burns to the mouth, esophagus and digestive tract when ingested, it causes immediate tissue necrosis as well as acting on the brain, the lungs, liver and kidneys. It depresses the nervous system, causing shock, rapid heart rate and is fatal when not treated immedately. In the early 20th century, is was used as an antiseptic agent and was found in many comercially available household products. Why would anyone do something like this to themselves? Especially a 23 year-old woman with a baby. Had she been dealing with mental health issues or was it something else? Had my grandfather actually driven her to such extreme lengths? Again, I will never know the answers to those questions, but the scenario was indeed tragic on several levels. The only other information I was able to find out about poor Jeni was that her parents, Esther Hapt & Lobi Louis Bakler died in Los Angeles in 1925 and 1928 respectively and had 13 children between them. I can only assume they went to California to escape the tragedy of their daughter's suicide or they had relatives or possibly some of their other children living there. Interestingly, they did not take their grandson Milton with them. His fate lay elsewhere.

At some point soon after, my grandfather married again, presumably to have someone to help raise his young son. That woman was Selma Wallach, a German Jewish lady, who's profession was listed as a cook. Since my grandfather was Russian, I can only assume that he spoke Yiddish with Selma (and poor Jeni, who was Hungarian), since that would've been the common language of ALL Jews of Eastern and Western European origin, aside fom their new American language, English. I have no clue how Harry and Selma met. I Imagine that he either met her through the Pittsburgh immigrant Jewish community or perhaps they met at a restaurant or bakery she was working at. I know virtually nothing about Selma's origins or how she came to be in Pittsburgh. In any event, Harry and Selma went on to have three more children, Johanna, Mathilde (Mittel) and Benjamin. Milton was also integrated into this "new" family. Again, I know nothing of their lives during this time, but I do know that by the 1920's Harry apparently owned a few taverns in Pittsburgh and had made quite a bit of money, despite prohibition. I like to imagine that he probably dealt with bootleggers and perhaps members of the local mafia, who procured booze up in Canada & smuggled it across Lake Erie and down the Allegheny river to supply the speakeasys in Pittsburgh. All I know is that by the mid-1920's, Harry had adandoned Selma and his four children, for reasons that I will never know. I do know that a census record from that time showed that Selma listed herself as "widowed", so I can only imagine there was conflict and a bitter divorce that left her with three young children of her own and a step-son. What kind of man would do this? How could Harry have left his second family and why? 

The answer lay halfway across the world, in Moldova/Bessarabia, where the fate of a dark eyed, dark haired beauty named Riva Leia Nusamovich was about to be intertwined with a man named Harry Marshall. And this next chapter is where things get VERY interesting.

Dedushka Zeyde: The Fantastic, Mysterious Story of Harry Marshall, Part 1

I never knew my paternal grandfather. He was born in 1880 and existed only in black & white or sepia photos and a handful of vague stories, recalled by my father. For a long time the only facts I knew were that he came to America from Russia as a young man, supposedly from Odessa, had several children, by several women (2 before the arranged marriage to my grandmother), he was functionally illiterate, but had once been a successful businessman and salesman, he spoke Russian (probably a Ukrainian dialect), Yiddish and broken English. 

The "origin" story, that was related to my father, was that when he was rougly 14 years-old, Harry came home to find his stepmother beating his younger sister and when he intervened, by throwing the stepmother off of the girl, he was told, "Wait until your father gets home!". He apparently didn't stick around for whatever punishment lay in store for him and ran away (leaving his sister behind, to suffer further abuse). Harry also told my father that he had spent time in South Africa (his age at that time is unknown, so presumably he got on trains or a ship at some point, which would've been the only way to travel that far from Russia at that time) and while walking through the jungle, with whomever he was there with, got pelted by monkeys, high up in the trees, tossing down the seeds of the fruit they were enjoying. The only other story from Harry's early life was that he was once riding in a cart pulled by horses, when wolves came out of the surrounding woodlands, spooking the horses, which overturned the cart, so to avoid being attacked, he undid the horses' reins, releasing them to run away, while he hid under the overturned cart until the wolves lost interest and moved on. Both are good stories, but I have NO idea if either are true or they were just exciting, cautionary tales told to entertain my father as a young boy. 

All of my life, I have been fascinated by my paternal grandfather and his arranged marriage to my paternal grandmother... I would stare at a particularly fascinating image of them, in what I assume was their wedding picture, taken in the mid 1920's, which hung in a black, oval frame, above my father's dresser... He in a 3-piece suit, his stocky frame balanced with one elbow propped on a high, small table, lined with fringe, looking intensely into the camera and she in a long buttoned coat, her black hair pulled back into braids, with a somewhat shy and demure expression. Who WERE these people? WHERE did they really come from? WHY did they come to America, HOW did they live? WHAT could their DNA, now coursing through MY veins, possibly tell me?

When I was in my 30's, I joined Ancestry.com, started piecing together the puzzle of my family tree, with mysterious figures on BOTH sides of my family and began to uncover a treaure trove of facts, documents and evidence to support my research on the people who I was descended from. It was and is my geneological/forensic anthropology dream come true! Harry Marshall, my paternal grandfather, who made his momentous, incredible life journey, over the course of 74 years, all the way from Russia (Ukraine) to his small grave in the Kishenev section of Waldheim cemetery in Forest Park, Illinois (on the far outskirts of Chicago), where he is buried next to his 3rd wife, my grandmother Eva. The things I managed to uncover made me happy, sad, amazed and some discoveries literally blew my mind. ALL of them are now being committed to memory via this blog and I hope eventually into an actual book.