I dived into the past, or so I thought. I pulled out a scrapbook made after my grandmother, Anna Goldberg, died in 1965.
On the first page is a beautiful tribute my Dad wrote to his mother in the Denver Post.
It began, “Mrs. Anna Goldberg, mother of nine children, 15 grandchildren and 22 great-grandchildren, passed away last week at the age of 86. She was a rare, kindly compassionate woman who devoted all her time, all her strength, all of her love to the rearing of her family.”
Her husband died at age 42 in the last global pandemic — the worldwide flu pandemic of 1918.
Anna Goldberg became, as my father wrote, “a penniless widow.” The only income came from her sons selling newspapers on the corners of downtown Denver. The daily costs 2 cents, the Sunday edition 5 cents. That was it, pennies and nickels. That was the family income.
This scrapbook consists mainly of sympathy cards and letters as well as notices of charity donations made in Anna Goldberg’s memory.
As I read through, I was, of course, moved by the memories of the grandmother I loved, but of course not nearly so much as my father did. Beyond that, I was struck by how much Denver Jewry had changed.
This is not a surprise, given that her death was 55 years ago. But I think that all of us become accustomed to “community furniture,” certain organizations and activities that are taken for granted, always there. And if they die off, they do so incrementally; we notice no big change.
What struck me is how many once very prominent organizations are no longer with us; how many activists in the Denver Jewish community today probably never heard of them.
There are, of course, survivors. They stood out.
Here are the defunct organizations (listed in the order in which they appear in the scrapbook):
American Medical Center, Ex-Patients’ Sanatorium, Ladies Auxiliary of the Ex-Patients Sanatorium, Children’s Asthma Research Institute and Hospital at Denver, National Jewish Home for Asthmatic Children Denver Ladies Auxiliary, Beth Israel Hospital (and Beth Israel Hospital and Home Society), Rose Hospital Women’s Division, Beth Joseph Sisterhood, the George Washington High School Board of Managers.
Among the surviving organizations (also in the order in the scrapbook) are:
Jewish National Fund, Congregation Emanuel, National Council of Jewish Women, National Jewish Health (then called National Jewish Hospital of Denver), Hillel Academy, Rose Medical Center (then called General Rose Memorial Hospital), JEWISHcolorado (then called Allied Jewish Community Council of Denver), BMH, and — the State of Colorado!
I’m not sure whether a couple of organizations still exist:
Lolly Coustan Memorial Fund for cancer research at the University of Chicago, The Women’s Committee for the Library of the University of Denver.
What hasn’t changed from then until now is the contrasting ways people respond to death. Some send simple cards, some send elaborate printed messages, and some elaborate personal messages.
A couple of them, while grounded in an appreciation for one specific person, seemed to reach a certain universal level. I quote a few of these sentiments:
“G-d knew that your dear, dear mother had fully accomplished her long mission here on earth and called her to Him to carry on in her benevolent way in another of His realms . . . ”
“Be thankful you had her so long as you have and that she is at peace are such trite and conventional expressions but do they help the void? No my dears, never . . . nobody understands, just the one who has lost.”
“ . . . wish there were other ways to comfort than mere words . . . ”
“G-d has a way of working these things together: Happiness and Sadness” [a great-grandchild had been born the week of her death].
It is impossible to peruse a scrapbook like this without connecting it to the present. It is a paradox. Here, one life has ended, but seemingly irrelevant details transcend the finality. For example, I noted the address of one of the donors: “The Gotham Hotel, 12th and Grant.”
This building stands directly across the street from the IJN offices! While it is undergoing extensive renovations, it has a shabby appearance. It will never be an upscale hotel again.
Another example: one condolence letter was signed, “Mrs. J. A. Shibko” of Chicago. This was a great-aunt, a rather independent woman. Which married woman signs her name this way today?
Then there was a reference to the “Sara Abramson Fund” at Hillel Academy. This had to be the mother of the late Faye Abramson Beren, a legendary woman in Denver whose own early passing led to a strong focus on her memory, eclipsing that of her mother, or at least the memory of the fund in the name of her mother.
To the extent that this fund and other worthy yet extinct causes listed above receive a humble revivification in this column, my recent dive into this scrapbook will have achieved a small universal resonance of its own.
Copyright © 2020 by the Intermountain Jewish News
