Category: Friends

In 1959 we lived on Manchester St. in the North End of Hartford and Harold and Barbara Richman lived on the Boulevard near Quaker Lane in the South End of West Hartford. Our paths crossed at Temple Beth Israel in that year as we and they attended the L-Z High Holy Days services and sat near each other. As well, we continued sitting in the same section at Shabbat Services. Eventually we exchanged social visits.

By 1961 the Richmans had built and moved into a house at 1 Kirkwood Road in West Hartford. We were beginning to think about and plan our move to West Hartford. One Sunday afternoon we were at the Richmans and talking about our hopes. Harold pointed to the empty lot directly across from their house and said it would be a good place to build. A short time later we bought the lot, and in March 1963 we moved into our new house, #4 Kirkwood, opposite the Richman home.

We each had three children. Our middle child, Lisa, and their oldest child, Lauren, though a year apart in school, became good friends and playmates. Their middle child, Jenny, was a classmate of our youngest child, Robert. We the parents used to watch them huddled in conversation on the wall in front of the Richman house talking about we knew not what! Harold sometimes said that if Jenny and Robert got married, we could build a house for them in the empty lot he owned behind his house. When Jenny married Jeff Toder, Seymour said to her in the wedding receiving line: “Does this mean you’re not going to marry Robert?”

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Bernard Sterling, a good PNAI friend, has developed a theory that among Jews there are only “two degrees of separation”. If two Jews meet and start playing “Jewish Geography”, one of them will know – or be related to – someone known to the other.

Last week Barbara Schloss of West Hartford (known slightly to us through her relationship to Seymour’s cousins, Denise and David Shapiro) was having her hair done at a salon in Plantation, Florida. She had never before met her operator, Cheche Rose, wife of my best friend at Syracuse Univ, Sheldon Rose. Cheche said she knew only one person in West Hartford, Bernice Saltzman, with whom she and Shel had lost contact at least 20 years ago. She still had a book I’d given their first child, A Child’s Garden of Verse. She gave Barbara her address and phone to pass to me.

Barbara called about 1 p.m. today with this information. As soon as she said she met someone in a beauty salon in Florida who knew me, I said: “it was Cheche Rose.” I asked: “Is her husband still alive.” No.

Shelly Rose, born 1923 and raised in Bridgeport CT, arrived at SU under the GI Bill in my sophomore year (1947). Early in the Fall semester, he said to me in a Shakespeare class (the third class we found we were taking together), “You must be following me around.” For the next three years, whenever our schedules meshed, we had coffee, cigarettes and conversation at least three days a week in a campus eatery. Shel was an only child. He was short, stocky and near-sighted. He was a fine jazz pianist. He was outgoing, but never a show-off. He could talk about anything. He smoked pot.

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The reason that I have decided to go to Richmond on Saturday is that my dear old friend, Martele, is in charge of a huge benefit for the Hebrew Home Saturday night, which will star Marvin Hamlisch. She especially wanted me to be there because Boss was a big (anonymous) backer and she wanted him and Nana there and knew they wouldn’t come if I didn’t bring them. Dore is coming from Norfolk so it will be a bit of a Playpen Pals reunion with Jena Sager and Jo Adams also there.

All of the six girlfriends were at the wedding of Dore’s son in Norfolk on May 28.
Nana and Boss were invited as was Martele’s mother, the only ones of our parents still living. It was really lovely.

Read as an announcement for the pulpit on Friday, March 31, 1989
by Rabbi Myron Berman, Temple Beth El, Richmond, VA.

We six women are friends since childhood. Legend has it that our mothers put us together in playpens when they played bridge. However we met, we grew up together and, though some of us live in distant places and all of us lead varied lives, we remain close friends still. Now in our 60th year, we share a childhood memory of the way our lives centered around Temple Beth El. We learned in its religious school, prayed in its sanctuary and danced in its social hall.

In honor of our parents who helped to found and supported Temple Beth El all their lives, we want to do some small thing that will strengthen the younger generation’s attachment to Temple Beth El and to the Jewish values that our parents and Beth El nurtured in us.

We have decided, therefore, to endow The Playpen Pals Fund that will provide care and equipment for infants and toddlers while their parents attend services and enable these parents to worship with tranquiiity.

Doris Abraham, daughter of Phil and Goldie (Passamaneck) Tatarsky
Josephine Adams, daughter of Sol and Bertha (Tatarsky) Elsner
Regina Sager, daughter of David and Ernestine (Rubenstein) Rosenbloom
Bernice Saltzman, daughter of Leonard and Ruth (Radman) Meyer
Dore Trestman, daughter of Harry and Annie (Bloom) Abramson
Martele Wasserman, daughter of Michael and Jean (Katz) Sporn Scher