Esther was born Esther Rebecca Varon on June 13, 1915 in Seattle Washington. Her father, Isaac, had emigrated from Turkey where he had been a candy maker in Constantinople (now Istanbul). Being a tradesman in an important commerce center, he knew many languages. In Seattle, he had held several jobs to get the money to bring his family and bride-to-be to Seattle. Candy making didn't work out in Seattle, so he worked in a shipyard and, later, sold produce at Pikes Place Public Market.
The Varons were Sephardic, orthodox Jews. Esther’s family and their relatives and friends formed a tight-knit group that continued to speak Ladino (a mix of Hebrew and Old Spanish). Esther knew no English when she started school, slowing her progress. She became very popular in high school when she gave cigarette samples to her friends that her Dad had left around the house. Once her Dad found out about it, he hid the samples: he definitely didn't approve of her project. Her father had been talked into selling them at his stand and wouldn’t hand out the samples because he didn’t approve of smoking.
The Varon's had hired a neighborhood boy to light the stove on Saturdays and to do other chores that they could not do, due to the prohibition against working on the Sabbath. One day, he started to chase Esther around. She quickly tired of his attention and, after avoiding him, told the family that she would take over the Saturday chores.
She told another story from that period; a robber came though her window while she was sleeping, crossed her bed, messed up her dresser and stole some of her things. Her father became aware of it when the robber left through the front door. In the morning Esther wondered why her sister Anne had messed up her dresser. Esther was a heavy sleeper!
A boy friend, I believe his name was Ralph Varon, initiated her to skiing and warned her to stay off a particular slope. It didn't look that bad so she started to ski on it, but shouldn't have. Esther hit a tree and her mouth wasn't the same afterward.
Esther became engaged to Ralph but broke it off when his mother insisted that they live with her and that the mother would be the head of the household.
After her high school graduation, Esther got a job as a cashier in the house wares department at Sears. Sometime later her immediate superior left to form a home appliance section in a hardware store in Ballard, a Seattle suburb, and talked Esther into going with him (with a substantial raise). Some customers would ask the uncommon lady sales clerk for things like left-handed screw drivers. The trip to work required a long commute so she read a lot on the bus.
The hardware store was in a fishing area. Fishermen would come in after returning from their cruises and would leave their earnings with Esther for safekeeping while they went out on the town. As a reward for safely keeping their money, they often told her that there was pie and ice cream across the street for her. While enjoying the treats Esther became a heavy coffee drinker.
Sometime after WW2 started, a man came in and talked to Esther about working for Boeing. With her brothers set to go into the services, she thought she should get involved in war work and agreed to go to Boeing and apply. When she did, she found a very long line and decided it wasn't for her and left. Sometime later, the man returned and asked her why she hadn't come to apply. When she told him what had happened he told her she didn't have to get in line - just show them his card. She did that and was put in charge of the girls in the document reproduction department (many of the men had joined the services and they were preparing to replace them with girls). Esther apparently was a lenient boss and the girls liked her, but they got the work done. One of the girls, Dawn, married a sailor and followed him to San Diego. She took a room where I was living. After many discussions with Dawn, in which she praised Esther, I decided to write to Esther. We met in Los Angeles when Esther came to visit a cousin.
While in Los Angeles my Aunt Molly and Uncle Manny took us for a typical Jewish dinner at Cantor's Deli; but the meal wasn't typical of what the Sephardic Jews ate. In particular Gefelte fish was new to Esther and she didn't like it, so she passed it to me. Seeing the empty dish Uncle Manny insisted she have more. (Another episode involving Gefelte fish took place in Dayton.)
We saw more of each other while Esther was in Los Angeles and after more correspondence we decided to get engaged. We were married November 19, 1944 and the wedding was an elaborate affair. My Mother and sister Emily represented my family. After a few days at a hotel in Seattle, we proceeded back to San Diego. With WW2 ongoing, one of my coworkers offered to let me drive his car back to San Diego. He had left it in Seattle because of the earlier gasoline shortage. Esther’s mother suggested that Esther send her wedding dress to Turkey for others to wear. Esther found out later that a dozen girls had worn her wedding dress. Our's was Rabbi Maimon’s first wedding and he recalled it when we saw him on our last visit to Seattle.
We lived first in my room in San Diego, and then moved to a duplex near the beach. It was quite a place; there was no problem talking to our neighbor when in the bathroom, so Esther got very friendly with her. We visited them in Tulsa, OK at a time when they had an infestation of locusts. We wondered at the fancy decoration on their screen door but found that it was covered with the insects!
When Esther became pregnant she would take the bus to see the doctor. She found it somewhat embarrassing because Mexicans on the bus would be talking about their sexual affairs and her Ladino background allowed her to eavesdrop on them. There were a number of occasions later when the Ladino came in handy. We were disappointed. Esther had a miscarriage.
After WW2, I accepted a job in the Physical Research group at Boeing and we moved to Seattle. Boeing was working on an antiaircraft missile. While I was there Boeing had just one launch where the missile looked like an errant firecracker.
We first lived with Esther's folks, the Varons, and shortly after I started to have stomach problems that the doctor diagnosed as a nervous stomach. Years later, when I had managed to lose some of the weight I put on at that time, I decided my nervous stomach was probably a case of a too-tight belt.
Irving was born April 20, 1946. It was not easy to get a formula that would satisfy him. Esther must have been very tired and wasn't easily awakened to feed him, so I handled much of the night feedings. Not long after he was born an apartment became available in the Varon's apartment house next door and we moved in.
Late summer I received a call from Professor Boone, my advisor at Ohio State, asking if I would be interested in becoming an Assistant Professor and take charge of graduate courses at Wright Field while finishing my Ph.D. After talking with the family I decided to accept the offer and left for Ohio. Classes were to start in about ten days, so there wasn’t much time. Esther was to follow with Irv after I found a place to stay.
One day her mother decided that Esther needed a rest and talked her friends into asking Esther to take her to a show. Since her mother was to take care of Irving, she went along. Esther had had a lot of trouble trying to feed Irv, and the doctor had been changing the formula regularly. When she returned from the show she found Irv happily sucking on one of Grandma's sweet pretzels and the formula unused; she had given him fresh milk. From then on, no pediatrician or formulas; it was obvious he had been hungry.
Esther's inability to be awakened easily soon became evident. One night, after I had moved to Ohio, the folks received a call from a neighbor that the baby had been crying for a long time and Esther must be out. One of them came over and found her asleep -- so they arranged to have Anne, her sister, sleep with her.
Unable to find a place to rent I bought a house and soon after asked Esther to come to Dayton. The train trip wasn't easy for her. Her Dad had tipped the Porter well, but didn't realize that others would replace him on the long trip.
Esther had carried too much with her, including, of course, Irv. I wasn't helpful either -- I had an afternoon class and didn't realize how long it would take to get to the station so was late arriving. The train got to Dayton and started off before Esther got off. Somehow she got the train stopped and got sailor help to get everything off, but it was at the end of the platform. The stairway down into the station had been locked and there was no one around to help. When I arrived Esther had made it into the station and she didn't want to talk to me!
When I bought the house I wasn't told that a renter was in it, not the owner, and that it wasn't going to be easy to get her out. So we were stuck at the Zehring's for a while. That wasn't good. Mr. Zehring was fine but he warned Esther not to let hid daughter Ethyl carry Irv because she might drop him! We found how likely after I bought a stroller, crib and highchair. With the new stroller Esther decided to go for a walk and let Ethyl carry it down the stairs while Esther carried Irv. The stroller was more than a little bent out of shape when it landed at the bottom (Esther somehow got it exchanged). Ethyl also messed up both the crib and high chair. She lifted the crib side and the high chair tray too hard and broke them. I fixed them. But Ethyl was a marvel at shopping. She would read the paper, determine where the best prices were for everything, ask her friends what they needed and, without notes, proceed to buy and deliver everything.
One night the place smelled fishy as Mr. Zehring made Gefilte fish. In the morning he asked Esther to try it but she told him she hated Gefilte fish. Finally he told her to taste it and spit it out in the sink if she didn’t like it. She finally did and loved it; it was nothing like Cantors! Mr. Zehring had made enough to distribute some around the neighborhood.
When it became obvious that it would be some time before we could move into our house, we looked around for another place where we wouldn't have to watch out for Ethyl. We settled on a home with a spinster. It wasn't much better; she insisted that Irv had to remain in his playpen. We were glad to move when our house became available.
The gal who had been renting the house had TB and slept in the room we wanted for Irv, so the first thing Esther did was start to wash down the walls. She was more than a bit dismayed when the door jam fell apart like a piece of plywood that had the glue removed. The house was full of termites that took a lot of my time (and Grandpa Varon's, when they came to visit). I replaced a 6"X6" upright that supported the floor with a steel post and did a lot of wood replacement in the cellar. Probing the basement wall I found a place where a large board had fallen into the cement; all that was left was the grain imprint on the cement. Esther said that if she left a clothespin in the yard, the next day the wood would be gone! I poured used crankcase oil into holes around the yard to get some control over them.
Early in our residence there, we awoke to a perfectly beautiful day and Esther had all of the windows open; then the sky darkened and it started to rain hard, with lightning hitting close by. Seattle never had electric storms and Esther was terrified and started to scream. The neighbor heard her and came over and had her pass Irv to her through the window. Esther went over there and the neighbor boys came over and closed the windows. I had a lot of water to clean up when I came home!
Other than the termites it was a nice house. Later, when we moved to Columbus, the house sold the first day to someone who had wanted it earlier but had been afraid of the termites.
One day we had one of my students, Morris Handelsman, over with his wife Esther. They saw the empty dining room and asked if we would like to borrow their dining room set that was in storage, so we got a very nice set. They became longtime friends; it seems evident now that they had bought the set from someone that was eager to get rid of it. The Handelsmans were garage sale enthusiasts and made many good buys. When we visited them we were shown their basement that was full with all the things they had bought.
I bought a prewar Ford from a used car lot that turned out to be a real lemon. It gave up on a trip to Columbus and was towed to Professor Boone's shop there. They sold me a much better car that served us well until we left for Los Angeles. I found out from them that the pistons on the other car had holes drilled in them to improve the oil flow and one of the pistons had lost its top!
Our street was a block from a bridge crossing the river so there was a lot of traffic on it. When Irv got a tricycle we wanted him to use it on our long driveway to the garage at the back of the house and stay out of the street. I ran a long trolley along the driveway and hitched Irv to it with a harness that included a rubber take up, so he wouldn't get tangled in it. After that Esther didn't worry about him when he was out. Onlookers wanted to know where we got it!
Henry was born in Dayton on October 14, 1948.
After some time it became evident that finishing my Ph.D. wasn’t going to be easy. As an assistant professor in electrical engineering I learned I wouldn't be allowed to finish in electrical engineering and, only with a special dispensation (granted to a few of us that had finished most of our work before the war) would we be able to finish in a different department. After passing (?) the language exams I had to prepare to take the generals in the physics department. With much study I passed them. But I had to repeat the oral in quantum mechanics; meeting your examiners for the first time on exam day is not the way to do it, particularly since I was interested in the origin of the field and the examiner was interested in the problems it could solve.
With my generals out of the way, the next hurdle was to finish a dissertation. We moved to Columbus and I joined Boone's vacuum tube laboratory. When Irv was asked what his Dad did he would answer that he was in school -- it was quite different from the jobs his friend's fathers had. In this period Ohio State had gotten some surplus WW2 kits for downed aviators. Each included a hydrogen balloon intended to carry an antenna aloft. Blown up with air, the balloon became a large, soft, strong ball that Irv and his friends bounced on for over a month.
Esther frequently visited one of our neighbors that had a television. The TV had an enlarging button that enlarged it vertically only. I continued to teach in Dayton, commuting via the school bus. The school had had a small plane for that purpose but a student had landed his plane and mishandled it on landing tearing up the commuting plane!
One day I drove to Dayton with the family and left them with a neighbor that had a son a little older than Irv. The two of them got into a few things. A model airplane made by the boy's older brother was hanging from a chandelier and they banged it around. Also, they found some paint and sloppily painted a few things in the basement. When the man of the house came home, he went out for some paint remover.
Bob was born August 9, 1950. Esther’s doctor told her that sucking was not any more natural than drinking and suggested that she join his many patients in having their infants drinking from a glass. Observers were astounded to see an infant holding and drinking milk from a whiskey glass and it sure was easier on us.
Many of the neighbors belonged to a church just a block away, so when the church had an affair Esther offered to help. When the pastor came over to thank her he asked why we hadn't joined; Esther explained that we were Jewish.When I received my Ph.D. Mr. Kappler, who had shepherded the sonar system though its installation in the submarines, came to visit. He talked me into joining Rand, the Air Force's think tank, in Santa Monica (RAND – "Research And No Development" – the "No" is often left off). RAND moved us to Los Angeles and I joined their countermeasures division. It was not a completely satisfactory place for me since RAND was precluded from doing any hardware work.
We bought a house in Westchester and the neighbors ganged up on us to contribute to a cement block fence. We were reluctant because we had liked the wide-open back yards in Columbus. I built a patio in back but its foundation had been the burial ground of leftover junk and it sunk, so I took out the bricks and, temporarily, put them against the wall. One day, the neighbor in back called Esther to see if she was aware of where Bob was. He had put his wagon on top of the bricks and used it to climb on top of the wall and was walking back and forth. There was about an eight-foot drop on the other side.
In 1952 we drove to El Paso, Texas where I presented a paper on my Ph.D. dissertation. While there we went to Juarez where Irv saw a Serape that he liked. The two Mexicans in the booth saw an anxious American youngster with money and determined to make a good sale. Unfortunately for them, Esther's Ladino allowed her to understand everything they were saying to each other, including a comment that Bob must be adopted because he was so much darker than Henry and Irv. Knowing their strategy, Esther was able to hold off the sale until the price came down substantially. At the end she commented in Ladino that Bob was not adopted, so they realized that she had understood everything they had said.
After I had been at RAND a couple of years, they recommended that the Air Force should supplement their radar system with a gap-filler system that would provide radar coverage behind hills, etc. where enemy aircraft could not otherwise be seen. I was delegated to work with a private company they engaged to implement the system. It was later taken over by the Lincoln Labs of MIT so we moved temporarily to the Cambridge, Massachusetts, area and I arranged to buy a new car and pick it up in Detroit on our way back. Before leaving, Esther left a diamond from her ring in the sink drain there; it was replaced shortly after. We arrived in Massachusetts in the spring of 1953. There was a late snow that the boys enjoyed. When Irv started school his teacher contacted us to tell us that he would have to be put back because he wasn't prepared for the class. The class was writing whereas Irv was printing and the class was able to tell the time from the clock. So Esther sat down with him and the next day he had no problem.
My work with the Lab took longer than anticipated so Irv and I traveled to Detroit and came back with the car. We saw a good deal of that part of the U.S. while living in Boston. Traveling back to L.A. we stopped and visited with the Handelsmans in Syracuse and the Weimers in Columbus. It was Bob's birthday so the Weimers had a cake for him.
While we were in Boston, RAND was working on another program to enhance our Air Defenses. They had recognized that training was a problem because it wasn't feasible to send big bombers over regularly to simulate surprise attacks by our enemies and they had set up a simulation to handle one site (with UCLA students responding to mock radars with large printers simulating the radar scopes). With the positive results of that test (the students were very disturbed when they allowed a simulated bomber to penetrate to, and bomb, L.A.) RAND proposed a system that would train all of the sites together using films made with the aid of computers to simulate both friendly and enemy aircraft. I became the chief engineer on that program.
We then had a house built. The boys were to go into one large bedroom where I had the wall hung on a different set of two-by-fours than the living room so the noise wouldn't disturb them. Much later I learned that it had served a different purpose; Bob used his bed as a trampoline and we never heard the noise! The boys also got into a house being built in the area. Bob dropped from the rafters and went through the temporary flooring. He injured his jaw badly and had to go to the hospital for the repair.
In 1957 I had had enough of the Air Defense work and accepted a position with the Ramo -Wooldridge Corporation (RW). They had built some prototype countermeasure devices that the services wanted to go into production. It was at a time when the military had decided that Los Angeles was too vulnerable because there was too much military work there so the factory had been set up in Denver and I was asked if I would move there and work to get more products into production. I agreed and we sold our house and rented a house in Englewood, Colorado.
I made frequent trips and on one occasion the boys got sick. When the doctor came he looked at the place where they were staying and insisted that they be moved. They were in a garage that had been made into a bedroom and there had not been enough attention made to keep it warm. (Esther says the water in the toilet froze). Also, men would stop by and ask for the previous occupant (apparently a prostitute). A farmer across the street stopped in one day and wanted to know when we would be eating. He then picked some corn and delivered it to us just in time to have it cooked for dinner. It was delicious! Irv started at the Junior High, the second Jewish student there. The first Jewish student there was a young lady. We became long time friends of her family.
We bought a home six months later and moved into it. It was much more satisfactory. Irv got a serious staph infection, however, and he had to go to the hospital to recover. Denver had outdoor musicals that we enjoyed. We drove around Colorado quite a bit including to the tops of Pikes Peak and Mount Evans (with my cousin Dodo, from Canada, and her new husband). Irv had his Bar Mitzvah in Denver.
One day we went to an open house at Bob's second grade class and the teacher came over and congratulated Esther. It seems that during a 'Show and Tell' Bob didn't have anything to relate, so he invented the story that he was expecting a baby sister. Not long after Esther didn't feel right and went to the doctor and was told she was pregnant. She had thought she was beyond that and didn't look forward to another son and was quite upset. The doctor told her he would adopt the baby if she didn't want it.
On my birthday Esther gave me a ticket for dance lessons at the Arthur Murray dance studio. I dutifully went through them, but it didn’t take. To Esther’s disappointment I never became much of a dancer.
About that time, Ramo Wooldridge found that the Air Force didn't want the countermeasures device to go into production so they were preparing to abandon the factory and I arranged to move to Woodland Hills in southern California's San Fernando Valley. I bought a house and brought a picture of it to tell Esther about the intended move, saying if she didn’t like it we would sell it and buy another. We then drove to California with Esther’s feet up on the dashboard. Suzanne was born in Woodland Hills on November 2, 1959. (Many years later, Suzanne, having had a year of internship in pediatrics at a hospital where the deaths were too much for her, was planning to transfer to pathology in Denver. During an interview in Denver she was asked if she had ever lived in Colorado to which she answered, "I was conceived here!" Her physician interviewer laughed and she got the position.)
When we moved to the San Fernando Valley in California, Esther became involved in the Temple, helping regularly in the catering area. For one of her early events, she made the matzo balls for Passover. She was not familiar with the technique for making them properly and patted them before cooking them. They turned out much too dense and hard. She learned from that experience and became an accomplished matzo ball cook.
Esther also enrolled Henry in the Bar Mitzvah class and got a date for his Bar Mitzvah. Henry had always been a reluctant scholar and shortly before the date the Rabbi called Esther in and told her that the Bar Mitzvah would have to be postponed. Henry just wasn't ready. With the invitations out she said that postponing the event was impossible. They agreed that she should bring Henry in for an audition. She confronted Henry and he just said he would be ready. He had a recording of his torah portion and made a tape copy of it on our reel-to-reel tape recorder and ran the tape as a loop around his bedroom. He then just laid on the bed and played it back until he knew it. With a good voice his rendition was essentially professional and he was complimented on it profusely.
Irv and Henry were active Boy Scouts. At summer camps Irv took responsibility for the 50-mile trail while Henry was responsible for maintenance. Irv, belatedly, became an Eagle Scout.
Bob had his Bar Mitzvah later without incident. When it was Suzanne's turn Esther thought back to her childhood when none of the girls took part in the services and discouraged it. She didn't realize that times had changed and that the girls in Seattle were then getting a Jewish education.
In 1964 I gave a talk in Lisbon, Portugal, about the mapping system that I had developed. Esther enjoyed the tours of Portugal, both those with the conference attendees and those for the women. We learned that California wasn’t the only place that had grass fires. While walking around, Esther broke the heel of her shoe, so we found a shoemaker. He was so delighted with an American that he could talk to that he didn't want to be paid.
I gave another talk in Switzerland in 1968 and we both enjoyed the trips around the country. A man from Israel talked me into repeating the talk before a highway group in Tel Aviv. They were unable to find us a hotel there on such short notice, so we were to go to a hotel in Jerusalem. Unfortunately, we arrived in Tel Aviv after dark on Friday so there were no buses to Jerusalem. It was finally arranged for us to go there in a small bus with the stewardesses and a few passengers. Esther said afterward that the man next to her had a wooden leg and that bothered her. We toured much of Jerusalem until a hotel was found for us in Haifa. When we got to Haifa we couldn’t find our bags – and the hotel room hadn’t been vacated. Our hosts placed us with a widow that had pajamas for me and a nightgown for Esther. We found that we had placed our bags in storage instead of in baggage. We toured the area for a few days and then I gave my talk and we returned home.
Later I was invited to talk at Macarthur’s old headquarters at Baguio in the mountains of the Philippines. I was told that it was a classified area, so I couldn’t take Esther with me. I left her at a hotel in Manila and had arranged for her to take a number of trips. When I later found out and told her that she could join meat Macarthur’s headquarters, she said forget it, I’m having a ball. Esther had taken one trip and then told the tour company she didn’t want anymore. She had been the only passenger, with the driver and an attendant. The next day she walked a block to a Cultural Center she had been told about. While there, a teacher came in with a bunch of small children and one child became sick and was a mess. The teacher ignored him so Esther went over and cleaned him up. Seeing this, the administrator came over and talked to her. He told her she was never to walk alone there – it was too dangerous. He called his boss, the Minister of Information, and from then on the minister’s wife took over. Esther was taken around the city, told to get some material and their seamstress made her a dress. Her hair was washed (dry). She also went in their chauffeured limousine to the premier of an important movie.
When I came back to manila we were taken on a riverboat around the country. We took a hydrofoil to Corregidor, but it was so choppy they had to drop down and ride it out. The minister’s family came to the airport to see us off. Esther sent them some things from here but we never heard from them. I suspect the family didn’t survive the take over by Marcus. We went from the Philippines to Japan where we rode the fast train, rode a hydrofoil to the gambling center and visited Hong Kong.
We had arranged to move my Dad to a much more satisfactory care center near my work. While he earlier had always been hungry for Esther’s cookies, the new center people were so delighted to have someone hungry that they had been spoon-feeding him and he was no longer interested in cookies.
Esther had an infected fingernail and Dorothy Gluck, a dear friend who had a daughter slightly older than Suzanne, suggested that she see her dermatologist. She did and he looked at her and told her to make an appointment with another doctor. She said nothing to me. A year later she got another infection and she went back. The doctor made an appointment for her and she went through a series of radiation treatments with a lead facemask. She never wanted to be in the sun afterward.
In 1980 I accepted a teaching position at Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo and brother Ben, who lived in the area, was trying to find a place to move my Dad. Before that happened Dad died, apparently from choking on something during the night. He had lost his false teeth; possibly at a hospital, like what happened to Esther’s bridge, and probably regurgitated something during the night and choked on it. Since he was essentially blind and deaf he didn't want to live, particularly if I wasn't to be around to see him occasionally. His body was cremated and we held a simple service at our house for him. Most of the Bertram clan was there. Dad had a pacemaker with a dead battery. Years before, first sister Rose and then I, had refused to give our approval for new batteries to be installed because we knew he didn’t want to live.
Esther had trouble with directions and, very early, the boys were helping her make the correct turns. When Esther Handelsman visited us, Esther had a doctor's appointment and Esther H offered to go with her and drove. Talking away they missed a turn and it was some time before Esther realized it and had no idea where they were. When they finally got to the doctor's office she was so flustered that the doctor thought she was getting senile.
In 1983 we went to Israel with a group conducted by one of my students at Cal Poly who was born there. We saw a lot of the country. He told us that during the war when Israel was born, friendly Arabs saved his family. After the war many Arabs left Israel at the urging of their leaders.
About 1985 we made a trip to the British Islands. In Scotland Esther had a severe asthma attack and our tour guide suggested she see a doctor. We were pleasantly surprised that there was no charge for seniors, including for medicines. The next morning she awoke early and decided to take a bath, so she started to run the hot water and went back to bed and fell asleep. The tub had no overflow drain and when I woke up the floor had a layer of very hot water on it. I managed to get to the tub and turn it off and then cleaned up the mess with bath towels.
Esther made another trip to England with mycousin Lila and her husband Manny.
We also made a trip to the Mediterranean, including a boat trip during a dry spell when the river was very low, so the boat carried less water than usual so it would ride higher. When they ran low on drinking water, they got more and many, including us, got sick. Esther was still sick when we arrived in Istanbul Turkey, so it was only on the last day there that she was able to stroll through the town. We entered a shawl shop and since the shop people were Sephardic they had a ball. She would like to have returned the next day, but we were off. We also visited Greece on that trip.
In 1988 we moved to the Village, a senior apartment that had earlier served Cal Poly students. One night, Esther washed out some things and didn't turn the water off completely. One of her pieces of clothing clogged the drain and the sink overflowed. (The overflow drain wasn't connected!) I discovered the wet floor when I went to the bathroom and it was essentially cleaned up when the gal at the desk stopped in. The water had dripped onto the woman in the apartment below so she had called the desk. She told me later that she had wondered whether she had gone back to her childhood problem! In talking about the problem I learned they had had water problems too; their overflow hadn't been connected either!
We made a trip to Russia where we took a boat from Stalingrad to Moscow.
One day I fell while walking, but managed to walk back to our apartment. That night it must have hurt a lot and I fell; I used their emergency call system, but nothing happened. I managed to alert Esther and she got someone up to get 911 help. It was found that I had broken my collarbone. The next morning I found that the help had gone next door; apparently the neighbors had somehow exchanged their radio call buttons some time earlier.
We enjoyed the time we were there but, in 2002, Irv and Suzanne talked us into moving close to Irv, Bob or Henry. The choice was ours but we needed to be close to a helping hand. We selected Scotts Valley where Henry and his wife Susan live and where it was much more accessible to our other children. The apartment is much smaller but the food is better and more help is close by if we need it. (The call system here is wired in and checked yearly, so it should never be a problem). Henry and Susan have been extremely helpful and the others have visited us frequently.
In the years before she died, Esther enjoyed watching Esther also greatly enjoyed watching musicals, ice skating and gymnastics on TV. She particularly enjoyed “The Sound of Music” and I think she would have been content to watch it every day. Not far behind was “The Glass Slipper” with Leslie Caron, though I played it mostly when time was short. Esther also loved the massages Karen Guggenheim gave her. Karen has always been very generous and helpful and visited Esther in the hospital and rehab.
Esther died Thursday, April 3, 2008 and it will be very lonesome without her. I will, however, be looking at our slides and I consider that I still have work to do, and that will sustain me.
Last revision: 4/26/2008
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