Wedding Wednesday: The Sunday Before Thanksgiving, 1946

Having been engaged since New Year's Day 1946, my parents were married on the Sunday before Thanksgiving:

Mr. and Mrs. Theodore Schwartz request the honor of your presence at the marriage of their daughter, Daisy Ruth, to Mr. Harold D. Burk on Sunday, the 24th of November, 1946 at 12 noon. Hotel McAlpin, Broadway and 34th Street, New York City.

Above, my mother Daisy (in gold lame dress and matching gold shoes) enjoys a joke along with her new husband's Mahler and Markell cousins and in-laws.

Thank you to Cousin Lois for identifying the woman who's standing above my mother's shoulder as Sylvia Ruth Volk, daughter of Ida Mahler Volk and Louis Volk. The young man whose knee my mom is sitting on is probably Daniel Markell.

My parents visited Ida and Louis in 1946, while still engaged, and brought them a house gift: a big salad bowl and a set of scoopers. Sylvia told her daughter Lois the story of that visit and when Lois attended my niece's wedding last year, she gifted the happy couple with the scoopers.

Wordless Wednesday: Edgar Wood at the Keyboard

This is a very rare photo of my late father-in-law, Edgar James Wood, playing the piano after retirement. He had played his way across the Atlantic during the summers of his college years in the late 1920s.

For decades afterward, he played professionally at nights and on weekends while continuing his "day job" as an insurance adjustor.

Lucky for me, he played a couple of numbers at my wedding to his son, not too many years after this photo was taken. Blog entry #300 is dedicated to Ed. PS: I just unearthed a 1985 photo of Ed at the piano, below :)

Mystery Monday: NOT Dora Lillie Mahler, Madcap

Are these photos of my great-aunt, Dora Lillie Mahler? NO. UPDATE: Subsequent research turned up true photos of Dora. This is photo above is not the same Dora.

My mother said that some of the photos were "Dora, friend of Grandma," also known as "Madcap Dora" because she was what was once called a "stitch." But my mother may not have known that her mother-in-law Henrietta Mahler Burk had a younger sister named Dora, who died in June, 1950.

Above, Dora seems to be in a traditional folk costume of Eastern Europe. Below, she's with a beau. The bottom photo is probably the oldest--check out that teeny, tiny waist!

Sentimental Sunday: The House on Rodman Street

Finally, I've seen the house on Rodman Street NW in Washington, D.C., where my great-aunt Ida Mahler Volk and great-uncle Louis Volk lived in the 1940s. It's been a long journey of genealogical discovery getting here!

Before Y2K (remember that?) I was desperately searching for the death cert of my grandfather, Isaac Burk, not knowing where and when he died. Isaac was married to my grandmother, Henrietta Mahler.

Genealogical records weren't as widely available online then as they are now, and it wasn't easy to find out about Isaac. Eventually, I found a terse obit for Isaac in the New York Times, which indicated when he died but not where. It must have been an especially sad time for the Burks because Isaac and Henrietta's two sons (my father Harold and his brother Sidney) were serving overseas in 1943 when Isaac died, and almost certainly couldn't get home for the funeral.

Eventually, an official in NYC suggested that I check with officials in Washington, D.C. That was the hint I needed. Once I sent for and received Isaac's death cert, there were new mysteries to unravel: Louis Volk was the person who gave information to the authorities when Isaac suffered a fatal heart attack at the house on Rodman Street. Why was Isaac, who lived in the Bronx with his wife Henrietta, visiting Washington in the first place? How was Louis Volk involved with my grandfather?

It took many more years to work out who was who and how we were related. Great-aunt Ida and Grandma Henrietta were sisters. Ida and her husband Louis both served as character witnesses when Grandfather Isaac petitioned for citizenship and was naturalized in 1942. Louis served as a character reference when my father, Harold Burk, son of Henrietta and Isaac, applied to be bonded at the beginning of his career as a travel agent.

Here's where the magic of cousin bait comes in: Ida and Louis's granddaughter, Cousin Lois, found me through this blog in 2010. She has filled in much of the missing info, introduced me to Cousin Lil (daughter of another of the Mahler siblings), and welcomed my branch of the family into her life. Sis and I are delighted that she took us to visit the house on Rodman Street, 69 years after Grandfather Isaac and Grandma Henrietta were there to visit Lois's grandparents, the Volks.

Wordless Wednesday: Grandma Climbs a Tree

My maternal grandma, Hermina Farkas Schwartz, had this photo in one of her (sparsely-filled) photo books. She had come to New York City in her teens, but tried to escape the heat every summer with a week or two upstate. My guess is that's where this photo was taken, right around the time of her marriage to Theodore (Tivador) Schwartz. See their wedding photo at top right of the blog's masthead!

Sentimental Sunday: Remembering "Little" Sister

My younger sister Harriet was named for Henrietta Mahler Burk, our paternal grandma.
Here's Harriet's grade-school graduation photo, freckles and all. Thinking of her on the eve of her birthday...tomorrow she would have been 57. RIP.

Wordless Wednesday (almost): Identifying the Twins

Most of the time, my mother (Daisy Schwartz Burk) didn't bother to mark photos to identify which of her twin daughters was which, since she could tell us apart. Luckily there are a few photos where we're identified.

Here, I'm on the left and my sis is on the right. We're sitting on the uncomfortable empire-style couch in the Bronx apartment of our Grandma, Daisy's mother, Hermina Farkas Schwartz.

Grandma had long hair rolled into a bun, pinned at the back of her neck. I believe she crocheted the antimaccassar shown here. (Don't see those any more, huh?!)