I wrote this for my mother’s eulogy. I think it says it all:
MOM
Today, we are not here to mourn the passing of Julia, Julie, Forman Welber. We are here to celebrate her life. She lived more than 94 years, which is never enough for a loved one.
On October 14, 2014, my 65th birthday. She dropped off my birthday gift, and then she got hungry for hot dogs, and stopped at the Pennsylvania Avenue Rutters to get some buns. I got the call at my office, she had gotten out of her car, tripped, and fell on her face, injuring her left eye. Surgeons and specialists at Hopkins repaired the damage to her eye, but could not save the vision. It began a nearly three year downward spiral in her health.
Until then, she was everything we want to be when we grow up. She drove, within her limits, she was active in several organizations, including the Retired Teachers, and the Woman’s Club of York., and the Historical Society Auxiliary. She regularly participated in water exercise classes, she had lots of friends, some of whom are present now, and she enjoyed being a grandmother to her grandsons, Tim, Adam and Derek, and a great grandmother to their children, and a mother-in-law to Diane and Burma, my wife and Andy’s.
On March 20, 1923, Bertha Hoffman Forman gave birth to twins, my mother and Aunt Florence. She and Grandpa, Louis Forman, already had a son, Uncle Irwin, and would later have another daughter, Mary Ellen, who passed away tragically at the age of four, complications of pneumonia, I’ve been told.
There is a story that mom told me that puts things in perspective. Her sister, Mary Ellen, who, had she survived, would be my aunt Mary Ellen, was dying. Uncle Irwin and his cousin were playing and knocked over Grandma’s china shelves, breaking her good china. She, Grandma, was quoted as saying, “They’re just things, they can be replaced.”
Grandpa and Grandma Forman were immigrants from Latvia, ruled then by Russians, who were not kind to those they ruled, especially their Jewish subjects. Grandpa worked his way through college, earning a degree in engineering, then married Grandma and moved to Lancaster. They insisted that their children get college educations, which put them a generation ahead of their time. Uncle Irwin went to F&M and Mom and Aunt Florence went to Millersville, then, Millersville State Teachers’ College.
Then Pearl Harbor was attacked, and our nation entered World War II, known as “the war” to that generation. Grandpa was employed designing war industry factories, Uncle Irwin was commissioned as an intelligence officer, and all but two of the male students at Millersville entered military service. The school was going to shut down, but a solution was found – they doubled the course load of the remaining students in order to keep the faculty working. Amazingly, at least to our “question everything” generation, the students never questioned it, they just worked harder, soldiered on.
When the war was over, Uncle Irwin went to New York and became a professional journalist and photographer. There, he met my father’s younger sister, my Aunt Edie. Home for holidays, they agreed to meet for dinner. Uncle Irwin brought his two sisters, Aunt Edie brought Dad, and his best friend, Joe Wechsler. Afterward, Dad told Joe that Julia, my mother, was the woman he was going to marry. It took him a year to convince her, but marry her, he did.
Dad turned a hobby of coin collecting into a business to supplement our income, and mom went to all the coin shows with him, and when my brother and I were old enough we went, too. When we were approaching college age, Mom went to work as a first grade teacher at Lincoln Elementary School, becoming an excellent teacher, and a mentor to other teachers. She was told by one of her principals that if parents were permitted to choose the teacher of their first grade kids, hers would be the only class.
Prior to the availability of personal computers and inkjet printer/copiers, there was something called a mimeograph to duplicate documents from stencils? In order to not have to wait in line to use the one at the school, mom bought one of her own, so that she could create and duplicate worksheets for her students. I later found to my amusement that an underground teachers’ union newsletter was printed on that machine. My mom, the radical. Who knew?
After retiring, they did quite a bit of travelling, often with friends, of which they had a considerable number. Then my Dad’s health started to fail, and Mom took care of him until his death. Then she spent time with her grandchildren, her friends, and her organizations. Our wives, Burma and Diane, were welcomed into our family. They were very happy years for all of us.
So, my mother’s was a life to be celebrated, she touched the lives of so many people, and set an example for kindness and generosity. But even as we celebrate her life, I don’t think a day will pass when I won’t think of her and miss her. But, once again, and for all time, she’s with Dad.
Lovely!
I didn’t mean to post and run, Everyone. We had thunderstorms last night that knocked out my satellite internet. Grrrr!
My Mom, Elaine Marcella, was born into abject poverty in 1937. Her Dad was a raging alcoholic, and her own mother wasn’t too far behind.
She was an only child until she was 14, and then, for some still inexplicable reason, Grandma and Grandpa had three more kids, all in a row...three more that could barely be fed, clothed and cared for.
Mom graduated High School (after moving around a LOT in her childhood) and met her husband through mutual friends, who was wealthy beyond her wildest dreams. He owned a car! (He was lower-middle class, at best.)
They married when they were both 20, then had me at 24 and my little sister at 26.
We had an amazing middle-class, suburban childhood full of love and laughter and we wanted for nothing. Mom dragged us all, all over the countryside on her now-famous Road Trips, to see America. Her favorite thing to say, though, when we got back to Wisconsin was, “We just live in the PRETTIEST State!” My Mom was an avid reader, so we girls both inherited that from her. She was pretty, smart, funny, loving - everything you’d want in a Mom.
I still have her, Thank Goodness. She will be 81 in September. My folks divorced when I was a young adult (she did her ‘duty’ raising us, as she put it) and she re-married and was married to my Step Dad for over 30 years. He passed away this winter from Pancreatic Cancer, and she is now making room in their home for her BFF of 50 years to move in.
They also have their name in for an all-on-one-floor Condo that they want, so her future seems to be set.
Mom is a breast cancer survivor. Get your mammograms, Ladies!
Mom went back to college to become an X-Ray Tech when she was 47 and newly divorced. She had no credit rating; had always been a Housewife, so I loaned her the tuition and book money - and she paid back every penny through the years. She had a wonderful career with a major medical group and she was VERY proud of that late-life accomplishment and told everyone that would listen how her Daughter, ‘sent her through college.’ LOL!
She’s coming out to our farm today with my sister and a few other family friends for a Mother’s Day Feast.
Thank you all for sharing your stories! It’s clear we all love and cherish our Moms in every way that we can. :)