The Great Escape

My father’s parents were immigrants from Eastern Europe.  Despite the fact that my father topped six feet, his father was five feet two and his mother barely five feet.  In fact, all seven children were taller than the parents.

My grandfather, whom I never recall meeting, came from a fishing village near Kiev or Kyiv, as they’re calling it now.  I once heard a rumor that he fled the village for America when he got someone pregnant, but the truth remains unknown.  As far as anyone knows, no other member of his family ever reached the States.

My grandmother, whom I did know slightly from her rare visits to us, which drove my mother crazy, came from Lithuania.  She entered the country as Minnie London.  I’m assuming that was an acquired name, but acquired from whom?  The poor woman never learned to read because her husband forbad it.  As you might surmise, this was not going to be a happy family.  The two of them moved from place to place in upstate New York, dropping children as they went, until they finally settled for good in Utica.

My father never had a good word to say about his childhood.  There were no golden glow memories as I had of Oneida.  The parents remained poverty stricken; and for their seven children it was a struggle for existence, never enough money, never enough food, never enough love.  Not the warm-hearted stories of immigrants about which one usually reads.  My father did have a sweet spot for his older sister Rosalyn.  Decades later, when he had left poverty behind, he even sent her to Israel, a lifelong dream of hers.

Later in life, when my father was in the hospital dying of cancer, women from Hadassah tried to come in to his room to give him a gift basket.  He brusquely turned them away.  He said they never did anything for his family when they needed them, he didn’t need them now.

Some immigrants, in fact the majority, come to America and make a success of themselves, working hard to move away from an impoverished state.  It seems my grandfather wasn’t interested.  Instead he peddled bananas from a cart, but most of the time he was in the synagogue praying. I assume that’s where my father got his distaste for religion.  My grandmother did the best for the family with her limited abilities.  I do know she made the best latkes I’ve ever eaten.

So there were the Kushners, mired in poverty, with the Depression descending on them, never had anything so never had anything to lose.  Except hope.  Along came FDR and the New Deal and the CCCs.  That’s Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the Civilian Conservation Corps, for those unfamiliar with history.  The CCCs was a way out with a stipend and three meals a day.  My father applied.  Heartbroken, he discovered he didn’t make it.  He was first on the wait list though, so there was still a chance.

The day before those chosen were to report, one of the lucky ones got sick.  My father stepped into his place.  The rest is history.

He never really talked about what he did in the CCCs, except once mentioning being a stone mason in the south, where they weren’t too friendly to Jews.  At that time in the Thirties, no one was friendly toward Jews.  Like, things have changed?  In the South they still use expressions like, “Are you trying to jew me?” when bargaining.

The CCCs saved my father.  He had a way out, of which he took advantage.  Receiving a scholarship from the University of Michigan, where he met my mother, he went straight through from freshman to Ph.D. in organic chemistry, thus enabling us, his children to make our way into the middle class.

Of course there were bumps along the way.  He still remembers how, when he was at Michigan, someone stole his winter coat.  He froze the rest of the winter.  But this was a minor setback to what turned out to be a sterling career at Lederle’s, later American Cyanamid, later Pfizer.  Thanks for the stock, Dad, it came in handy.

As far as the rest of his siblings:  One became a house painter, one sold funeral clothing, one became a policeman in Washington DC, one became a butcher, one became a secretary, and one followed my father into organic chemistry.