Poems honor marriages, friends not forgotten

 
Two years ago I began this blog to show us more about Harry’s life through his left-behind writings. In this post, we see yet more colorful memories from his personal files! When our family lived in Greenbelt, MD, 1949-1963, my parents made lifelong friends with many dozens of families. Those were pioneering days in the government’s experimental community outside of D.C. I’ve reunited with some of the “children” of those families as our parents have aged and passed away. I dedicate the following four poems – a few of likely hundreds – to them, and to all the other Greenbelt “kids” out there.





Aug. 22, 1993
To Irene and Sid Spector on their 50th Anniversary

Marriages, the sages say, are made in Heaven, every day,
But this I say, for what it’s worth, a few good ones are made on Earth.
At least, my friends, they used to be, when we were all still young and free,
And each man chose himself a wife, to have and hold throughout his life,
And every woman gave her heart until, they said, ‘death us do part’.
So pass the word around the nation, educate each generation,
While we, the older ones, you know, who hit our fiftieth long ago,
Celebrate again tonight with someone else who did it right.

These newlyweds, this pair of clowns, who spread good cheer with smiles, not frowns,
This marriage is a great success, a miracle, no more, no less,
Because they worked to make it good, they didn’t have to knock on wood.
The Spectors, Irene and her Sid, if anyone did good, they did.
For after all is said and done, they have more friends than anyone,
They share their love with all their friends, their friendship knows no bounds or ends,
They set the pattern and the form for love that’s genuine and warm,
Their love, a source of pride and pleasure, their friendship all of us can treasure.

So here’s a word of sound advice that bears repeating once or twice,
To keep all couples on their toes, and we all need this, heaven knows,
Love is just like bread, they say, it must be made fresh every day,
So each day make your bread anew, and each day love each other, too.
And if we all keep love’s sweet score, we might survive for fifty more!


Nov. 1, 1992
To Fran and Jack Sanders on their Golden Wedding Anniversary

The Year was 1942, and all throughout the land,
Our generation danced to music played by each Big Band,
When Benny was the King of Swing, on boxes called a juke,
And Basie was a royal Count, and Ellington a Duke,
When Harry James and Miller, Glenn, the Dorseys, Sammy Kaye,
All taught us how to jitterbug, and how to swing and sway.
Sinatra sang the songs of love, and so did Crosby, Bing,
And all of us knew all the words and helped the singers sing,
Sweet music filled the airwaves every night and every day,
And we could name each major band when it began to play.

Oh, we were all so very young, the world was younger, too,
When Jack and Frances found a love that stayed forever true.
And so these two got married, by a local judge, at first,
Which wasn’t really proper then, but that was not the worst,
To consummate the marriage Sanders’ Grandma made them wait,
For a Chuppa and a Rabbi who could bless their wedded state.
With their mutual commitment made, for better or for worse,
Then Greenbelt afterwards became their hometown universe,
And here they raised two kids with love, and made their home secure,
And here they made a host of friends whose friendships still endure.     

And then, as it was preordained, believe this, friends, or not,
The Sanders both were doubly blessed – six grandkids were begot!
Well, fifty years have now gone by as quickly as a wink,
It seems they’ve hardly had a chance to turn around or blink,
And both of them are older now, and wiser, so they say,
But deep inside they’re still as young as they were yesterday.
With family and friends around for them to be among,
The love that lives within their hearts will always keep them young!
So here’s to Fran and Jack tonight, and to their family,
And here’s to all our children, friends, our immortality!


Jan. 7, 1983
To Jack Sanders on his Retirement

He has made his final call upon each liquor store and bar,
And now he’ll have some time to spend in cleaning out his car!
He will have more time for golfing and for treating Fran with style,
Which will surely keep her smiling for at least a little while!

He’s achieved a reputation as a connoisseur of wine,
He knows which brands are bad or good and which are really fine,
But now that he’s retiring he no longer has to drink it,
He doesn’t have to sample it or sip it, let them sink it.

So now he’s free to switch from wine and learn to savor beer,
For beer has many properties that bring about good cheer,
And beer makes better lovers, I would wager you or bet,
And you may take my word on that, but please don’t ask Jeanette!

Now we all can raise our glasses in a sweet retirement toast,
To a guy with more admirers than most of us can boast,
May all the many years ahead be happy and carefree,
And may funds continue flowing into Social Security!


Feb. 15, 1975
To Ratzkin, Shinderman and Pines on their 60th Birthday

Now if anyone had told us just a year ago today,
That we all would here be gathered from our homes so far away,
We’d have laughed at them and asked if they had lost their foolish minds,
Yes, but here we are to honor Ratzkin, Shinderman and Pines!

And all of us have traveled here from near and far away,
To celebrate and dedicate this most auspicious day,
To sing our Happy Birthday songs, those well-remembered lines,
For three good men named Shinderman, and Ratzkin, too, and Pines!

We have shared so much together, through so very many years,
Both our simchas and our sorrows, both our triumphs and our tears,
We have shared some stormy weather, we have shared some happy times,
And now we’ll share your birthdays, Ratzkin, Shinderman and Pines!

And each one in attendance, by his presence in this place,
Is expressing his affection with a special touch of grace,
Just attending is expressing all the love that you have in ya,
For it proves how much we care for Ratzkin, Shinderman and Pinya!

So here’s to number sixty, just in case you’re keeping score,
And here’s to all the years ahead, at least as many more,
And here’s to birthday greetings, in a poem that really rhymes,
And here’s to all the friends of Ratzkin, Shinderman and Pines!

Copyright 2017, Elaine Blackman

Harry recalls the 'life of the party' (plus '50s photos of a community's labor of love)

Harry outlived many of his friends, and now I appreciate the stories he wrote in their memory. We've seen several on this blog -- each eulogy features the very heart of the person Harry remembered, and together they tell stories of a bygone generation of friends. Below you'll see another tribute for a man he befriended in Greenbelt, MD, the planned city built by President Roosevelt's New Deal. It's where Harry and Jerry Pines were among the founders of the Jewish Community Center -- built not by the government, but the residents themselves -- in the early 1950s. Below the tribute, I posted a few of the photos Harry saved from their do-it-yourself construction project.

Harry and Jerry Pines posed with friends on a trip in the 1970s. All were part of a large community of activists who remained friends for life, even though most moved out of Greenbelt in the '60s.

Those of us who have known Jerry Pines through a good part of our adult lives don’t have to be told what kind of man he was. But every person is viewed differently by the people he knows – his wife, his children, his grandchildren, his colleagues at work, his friends and his neighbors – each of them views a person from his own perspectives. I want to say a few words about him today from the perspective of a couple of his friends, Jack Sanders and myself, to show you how we looked at Jerry and to add a little understanding of that view to the storehouse of memories that his family will cherish in the years to come.

Whenever I think of Jerry Pines, one thing immediately comes to mind. He was always the life of the party. We’ve had a lot of parties over the past thirty-five or forty years in our circle of friends, and at every one of them, without fail, Jerry would sooner or later take center stage. When we needed a master of ceremonies, we’d call on Jerry. When we needed someone to say a few words about this or that, about almost anything, we’d call on Jerry. Not only did he have a sort of stage presence, as real as that of a professional entertainer, he also had the most delightful sense of humor.

He knew how to take the most ordinary incidents, the most routine of daily circumstances, and tell about them in such a way as to transform them into the most hilarious misadventures. The mishaps that befell him were unbelievable and, the way he told about them, unimaginable, as well. If you ever heard him tell about the things that happened to him when, for example, he would take a new car back to the dealer to get some simple little things fixed, you’ll know what I mean. Whenever he told a story like that, he would have us gasping for breath because we laughed so hard.

In these more recent years, he had more than his share of physical discomfort and pain, but even when talking was a great effort for him, he never lost that sense of humor and that knack for bringing out the bizarre aspects of any situation. I recall vividly when a few of us were all together last year, not long after he got that new gadget that made it possible for him to talk. Boy, did he talk! The effort required for him to talk didn’t faze him or inhibit him at all. He had us all in stitches.

There are a lot of other things we remember about Jerry Pines – his kindness, his generosity, his willingness to share, his genuine interest in others – these qualities are legendary among his friends. He had a great many virtues. He had an unwavering morality. He knew what was morally right and practiced it throughout his life. You could say that all of us know the difference between right and wrong, but we frequently look the other way when someone does something wrong. Not Jerry. He could not abide duplicity or dishonesty in others, and never hesitated to point it out when he encountered it. He played it straight all his life and he expected others to do the same, but he was not so naïve as to believe that they always would. One of the last things he told Jack Sanders, who saw him just before he went in for surgery last month, was that his wish for his grandchildren was that they would grow up to be honest, forthright citizens of high moral character. Jerry talked that way, and he meant it.

He was a keen observer of the world around him and deplored injustice wherever he saw it. He could never understand, for example, how in this great country of ours there was so much poverty and disadvantage, despite all of our national wealth and resources, and he championed the cause of the ill-fed, the ill-housed and the underprivileged. He wanted everyone to have a better life, not just here, but everywhere. Maybe that’s why he liked so much to travel, to visit other countries and to see other lifestyles, not just to say that he had been there, but to see things for himself and to gain a better understanding of other peoples and other cultures. Every trip he took was a learning experience for him and he always came back with some very cogent observations about the things he had seen.

Jerry Pines led his life with grace and style, with humor and wit, always looking at the bright side, never giving in to despair. He was a friend, and his friendship brightened our lives.

A complicated labor of love

The Washington Star news clipping (above) from March 20, 1955, and construction photos (below)
 

The project to build a Jewish Community Center in Greenbelt was an icon of community spirit among neighbors and friends. But it wasn't easy. In an article in The Washington Star Pictorial Magazine on March 20, 1955, Harry described several barriers:

"Often we had the heartbreaking job of tearing down work that took us weeks because a construction expert would tell us it wouldn't do." 

"Most of our people didn't know the front end of a trowel from the back of a wheel-barrow when we started." 

"One of our problems was the old saying, 'A little learning is a dangerous thing'. Too often we had 15 self-elected foremen all telling one another what they had learned from books and how to do the job."

I'd recognize my dad's jacket anywhere. Is he inspecting the wall?

Harry, Jerry and the others attended the building dedication on March 20, 1955 (above and below).

I was thrilled to find these '50s photos. (I have to wonder how long they could sit in those chairs.)

A telling story of a riverboat ride

Did you keep a journal on your summer vacation? Harry’s speech below about a long-ago incident in London reminds us that it’s never too late to document our memorable trips. To me, it exemplifies how Harry could tell a story -- and remember every detail. He told this one at a synagogue event honoring his longtime friend Sid Spector. The two men met in the early 1950s, when they and their young families lived in Greenbelt, MD, the planned community where pioneer families formed lifelong friendships.

Harry and Jeanette feed pigeons on their shoulder in London, circa early 1980s; Jeanette (behind) with fellow travelers Sid, Irene, and Frances.

It was about 25 years ago, or thereabouts, when we took a trip to England – Frances and Jack Sanders, Irene and Sid Spector, and Jeanette and I – Harry Zubkoff. It was a great trip, not only because of the adventures we experienced, but because of the company we were in. But let me tell you about one incident that comes to mind, just to illustrate the kind of man Sid Spector is.

We had arranged to take a little boat tour of London on the Thames, that storied river that runs through the heart of town. It wasn’t a big boat, just a couple dozen passengers at most, with a guide who pointed out the historic sites as we passed them by. After a while we noticed that the boat had slowed down considerably and seemed to be lazing around in circles. Actually, it really was sort of drifting around in circles with the engine just a shade above idling.

Then the Captain came down from the bridge and opened up a hatch on the aft deck and disappeared down below. Now all the passengers gathered around wondering what was going on and beginning to get a little concerned.

The Thames, in a way, is something like the Potomac River which runs through the heart of Washington – which is to say, polluted. It was not much more than about 100 yards wide where we were, not too far to swim to shore if we had to; but who would want to risk entering those polluted waters? Well, anyway, there we stood, murmuring to each other nervously and getting increasingly anxious and yes, a little bit scared, too. But not our Sid.

Bold as brass, Sid detached himself from our group and followed the Captain down the hatchway to below decks. We could hear them talking down there but couldn’t make out the words. After a while, the Captain came back up and announced that there was something wrong with the rudder, which meant that he could not steer the boat, and that he would have to call a rescue vessel to come alongside and take the passengers off and ferry them back to shore.

Then he and Sid began discussing the problem and what they could do about it, and after some arguing back and forth they arrived at a solution. Sid was to go back below and manipulate the rudder manually while the Captain eased the engine to slow forward speed and shouted instructions to Sid to move the rudder this way and that to get us back to the home dock.

Well, that’s exactly what they did, and it worked. Sid saved that boat company a lot of money that day, the passengers had an adventure they would always remember (imagine, stuck in the middle of the Thames River), and we confirmed what we always knew anyway – Sid Spector is some kind of clown and our hero.

Oh, and by the way, the Captain made Sid an honorary member of England’s Merchant Marines and gave him a pass on that little river ship line if he ever gets back to England.  

Sid really was "some kind of clown." Harry posed separately with friends Sid and his wife Irene, circa mid 1980s. By the way, these two clowns managed to enter the Pentagon to surprise Harry on the occasion of his retirement in 1986 -- and a TV crew caught them on camera during an "end of an era" interview with Harry. I'll post the video transcript and excerpts soon -- stay tuned.