Sentimental Sunday: Dusty box? Genealogy gold!

In Sis's basement to look for Christmas stuff, we noticed a nondescript, dusty box sitting on the shelf. Curious, we lifted the lid. Family history gold!

Inside were Sis's elementary school report cards, diplomas from grade school/junior high/high school, her P.S. 103 autograph book (like mine but with her graduation corsage pressed inside!), complete programs from our graduations, and many other childhood artifacts. Also some ephemera like a ticket to her high school graduation, held at the then-elegant Paradise Theater in the Bronx, and a stack of college newspapers featuring the sorority she started at Lehman College (more in a later post).

The box held other treasures, including a certificate issued by Lebanon Hospital (now Bronx-Lebanon Hospital Center), where Sis and I were born just before 6 pm, on a cold Wednesday afternoon in February [no dates, please].

The map at right shows that Lebanon Hospital is located on the Grand Concourse, once a ritzy area of the Bronx and a 30-minute cab ride away from where Daisy Schwartz Burk and her husband Harold Burk were living in the Northeast Bronx.

For years, Sis and I would gather around Mom as she worked in the kitchen and ask her to tell "The Hospital Story." She told it something like this: "We had no idea that twins were on the way. After Dad took me to the hospital, he sat in the waiting room, holding a roll of dimes for phone calls to tell the family whether the baby was a boy or a girl. After the first baby [that's me!] was born, the staff was about to give Dad the news when the doctor began delivering the surprise second baby [Sis!], just two minutes later. As soon as Dad found out, he pumped dime after dime into the pay phone calling relatives to tell them about the twins! You girls had to stay in heated cribs at the hospital for a few days until you weighed 5 lbs each; only then you were allowed to go home with us."