By 1956 both of my paternal grandparents are gone and my father had enlisted in the Navy after spending a few years living with his older sister, brother-in-law & nephews in Long Island, NY. Eva had died of cancer in 1953 and 2 years later, Harry Marshall, father of 6 children by 3 different women also died of heart disease. He had married one last time after Eva had passed, to an unknown woman, someone to look after him in his last few years. His story ended with a grave, in the Kishenev section of Waldheim cemetery, buried beside his wife Eva, his 3rd and longest lasting marriage.
My father, Harry's youngest son, spent 6 years on active duty in the U.S. Navy, then returned to Chicago in 1962. He attended Northwetern University and was a reservist at Glenview Naval Air Station. During this time, he had lots of adventures of his own. In 1966, he met and married my mother, Sybil Janofsky, who was an Audrey Hepburn lookalike, also the daughter of immigrant parents (who's stories are equally as fascinating as Harry Marshall's). She, like my father, had lost a parent (her father), but she had grown up in the Rogers Park neighborhood of Chicago, where the more middle class Eastern European Jews had settled. Her parents were college educated, which was unheard of for most immigrants, a teacher and a doctor respectively. My mother was not only beautiful, but very smart, having gotten a full academic scholarship to Roosevelt University in Chicago. She graduated with honors and became a teacher, like her mother. I was born 2 years after my parents married and my sister Joanna followed 5 years later. My father has always said that his mother Eva would have loved being a grandmother to my sister and I, but sadly, she never had that opportunity. I'm sure she would've been a wonderful Bubbe and perhaps Harry would've been an interesting Zeyde.
All I can surmise, after years of researching my family history and my grandfather Harry in particular, is that he had a definite taste for adventure, he must've been a very determined man, having left Russia & come to America at the age of 25, he clearly needed women in his life, although he abandoned his first 4 children and 2nd wife Selma, he was physically and mentally strong, but also vain, stubborn and selfish (traits which both my Aunt & father definitely had), he went from rags to riches and back to rags throughout the course of his life and I do wish I could've sat with him, drinking a glass of tea, while listening to the fascinating stories he had to tell.
There are also some amazing coincidences and revelations that I came across as part of my research...
The first one was the sad story of Harry's first wife Jeni. I was horrified at her death, but also happy that I was able to coroborate a story / rumor with actual facts, piecing together the mystery of who Milton Marshall's mother and Harry's first wife really was.
The second was finding out that my sister was not the only Joanna Marshall, there had been Johanna Marshall, Harry's first daughter, born many decades before her. I wish I could've met my father's half-brother and half-sisters, because I'm sure they probably had very interesting stories about their lives and their parents.
The third was finding out through my research that in the early 1940s, Harry had gotten work through the WPA project in the very town where I now live, in suburban Chicago, helping to build the local library. My father recalled that his father had huge hands, which I'm sure came in handy as a laborer, butilding that libray.
The fourth was finding my father's half-niece and nephew, Jay Adlersberg and Lynn Adlersberg Colby, who I am in touch with and would love to hopefully meet in person someday, since they, my father, myself and my sister, as well as his 2 nephews are the only living descendants of our grandfather Harry (besides all of our children).
But the fifth and most heartwarming discovery I made was this: My father's recollection that his mother's favorite song was "Mein Shtetele Beltz", which made perfect sense, once I came across my Aunt Belle's birth record, which showed that Riva Leia Nusamovich was born in the town of Beltz (modern day Balti) in Moldova, a fact that nobody, least of all my father, even knew!
And then the sixth, most personal coincidence was realizing that my daughter's middle name Leah is the same as her great grandmother's. I hadn't known Eva's "real" name and although my daughter's middle name was chosen to honor my Aunt Lila, just as my name Ellen was chosen to honor my grandmother Eva, perhaps her spirit had also been influencing me in a way that I never could have imagined.
ALL of this is because of one man, my paternal grandfather, Harry Marshall, who's story has now been told, and preserved, by the curious, research-junkie, writer granddaughter that he never even knew.
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