LAST WORD: March break - the right thing to do
Back to Top Got back on the weekend from March Break with Giovanna and three (of the four) kids. Went to Cave Creek, Arizona. Nothing to do and lots to do all at the same time. Cycled a lot with the youngest two, Mélanie (15) and Morgan (13), and the three of us even competed in a National Mountain Biking competition that happened to be on nearby - competed against American pro riders (the three of us agreed there's a certain distinctive honour in finishing last, if one doesn't count the half dozen guys that bust tires with no spares and had to walk back - I broke my chain, but only three miles from the end, so could run the rest). Mélanie and Morgan actually did well, even though they said they felt "funny" not being dressed up like a spandex Christmas tree as the pros were. On the way back after the race we drove past a French restaurant, "Le Sans Souci" (no worry, no cares) - made me think of my French grandmother, Madeleine Thorel. Madeleine was 14 when my grandfather John Doig (18/19) met her in Normandy during WWI, and said he'd go back and find her when the War was over. He did. He spoke no French, she spoke no English, but love spoke for them both, and they moved to Scotland and married. Madeleine told me that she had agreed to marry John (she called him Jean) on two conditions: children are baptized Catholic, and she gets to choose the names. So in Scotland I grew up Catholic (relatively rare), with a mother called Bernadette, an aunt called Thérèse, another aunt called Madeleine, as well as an uncle called, of all things in Scotland, Théodore - guaranteed the only Théodore in the whole country. Some of the grandkids got French names too - like me, or my cousin Madeleine, or another cousin Colette who now lives in Edmonton. Madeleine Thorel would have liked "Le Sans Souci" though she never went out to restaurants - she said she cooked too well at home, and John Doig never suggested otherwise. Each of the five boys in my own family had weekly chores to do, and mine was to do my grandmother's "messages" (groceries), which I'd cycle over to do every Saturday morning - and if it was cold she'd put on a coal fire, toast me the heel of the 'plain bread' with a fork over the fire, drop in small cubes of cold butter to steam down into the thick (and often singed) toast - and she herself would have "un petit sherry" and play Edith Piaf records, telling me stories and showing me photographs. She wasn't at all fluent in English, and she would mix French and English together, using French words whenever she'd forget. Two phrases that stand out are "Go chercher your bicyclette" and the not-mixed-up "Je me souviens de ça" (I remember that). Would have liked to have had lunch with Grandmère Madeleine at "Le Sans Souci" in Arizona - might have been her first lunch out ever. But Giovanna and I did have lunch, with Mila Webster from Phoenix last week, whose husband Gerry Webster died a month ago. Mila and Gerry are actually the reason we were in Arizona for March break to start with, and therefore the reason indirectly that me and two of the kids were out cycling in the desert. Whereas Madeleine Thorel is a product of WWI, Gerry Webster is a product of WWII. The reason that Giovanna and I connected with Gerry is that ten years ago we had our basement completely renovated for our blended-family kids, and hired a project manager to help design it with us and oversee the construction. After it was done, we had become friends with Donna, the project manager, who told us she had a house in Cave Creek Arizona, near her in-laws, because her father-in-law had fought with the Canadian Forces through Italy in WWII, had breathed in bad stuff, become an engineer afterwards in the Hamilton Ontario steel mills (more bad stuff breathed in) and had retired to a desert climate - and we could borrow her house for a week. So ten years ago off we go to Cave Creek, and across the street we meet Alan and Roseanne Simberloff, whose family was originally Russian Jews, but now living in New Jersey running a meat and poultry distribution business. Though Alan and Roseanne were more than a generation older than us, we walked with them early in the mornings among the cactuses (cacti?) and the odd coyote, got to know them, and had lunches with them as well. At the end of the week they said: We like you, you seem to like us; Gerry and Mila's house over there is for sale, not yet listed with an agent, why don't you buy it? We said what a joke, we have partnership loans at our separate law firms, recently bought a house for us and the kids with a far-too-high-mortgage, just renovated the basement for the kids, have four kids between us, we live 3,000 miles away, and besides we have no money (we're only here because it's free). They say okay, but let us show you the house and some of their photos, because "Gerry is a wee bit Scottish, and Mila is a wee bit Italian, like you guys". Intrigued, we go visit the house, thinking we'll see bagpipes and pasta, and in the entryway we see an old black and white photo of a family wedding of about fifty people hugging and smiling. Alan goes along the first row and says "Treblinka, Bergen Belsen, disappeared, Auschwitz, don't know, don't know". More than two-thirds gone. We say how can Gerry and Mila be a wee bit Scottish, a wee bit Italian? A summary of what Alan tells me is this: • Gerry Webster's original name is Herr Gerhard Weber, born and grew up in Koenigsberg, Germany. A German Jew, though in fact raised by a Lutheran minister (Gerry did not realize his ethnic background, or that he was Jewish, until age 11).
• Kristallnacht happened (Jewish people beaten up in the streets, and Jewish businesses damaged and demolished; Kristall = glass, nacht = night).
• Gerry managed to get a ticket to London, and from there got a ticket on a steamer to America.
• He called home, found out it was getting much worse, and was told 'travel on and go to America'.
• Instead he went to a British Army recruiting station to sign up. War had now broken out, he only spoke German, and the English officer (through a translator) told him "you're a German national, we are at war with you, we don't know who or what you are, and I really should intern you". Gerry told him he was more Jewish than German.
• The officer said he'd send Gerry to work on a Scottish farm for a year to learn English, and Gerry could re-apply a year from now. So Herr Gerhard Weber went off to a farm in Inverness (an approximate equivalent of being interned) and learned English (or an approximate equivalent thereof - he was in the Scottish Highlands after all). During that year, Herr Gerhard Weber became Gerry Webster.
• Gerry Webster fought side-by-side, as a German Jew, with Scottish, English, Welsh, Irish and Canadian soldiers through Europe, and survived. Many did not. And God knows many of Gerry's relatives did not survive either.
• After being de-mobbed at the end of the war, Gerry went to the steamship company with his 5-year-old outdated ticket that he'd kept. When he told them what he'd been doing the last five years, they sailed him to New York City.
• Gerry settled down in Rockford, Illinois, became an engineer, and set up and ran a successful tool and die business. In Rockford, Illinois, he met Mila, an Italian-born Jew - and they married and had two girls. In the late 70's, they retired to Cave Creek, Arizona.
• And now their home - a wee bit Scottish, a wee bit Italian - was for sale - because they were now elderly and wanted to move to Phoenix (about an hour away) to be near hospital services (there are none in Cave Creek, there's not even a taxi). Giovanna and I met them that evening for the first time. Gerry spoke English with a strong German accent, but if you listened carefully, you could tell there was a Celtic brogue there as well, and he would also now and then use a word that though English, was more commonly used by Scots. Mila was introduced to Giovanna, and hearing the name "Giovanna" said (in Italian) "Do you speak Italian?". Mila hadn't spoken Italian in almost 50 years, but to me (with my food-based Italian vocabulary) seemed completely fluent with Giovanna (Italian is Giovanna's first language, though born in Canada). Mila starts to cry. Giovanna starts to cry. Gerry starts to cry. I bawl too. At 3:00 a.m. that night (we couldn't sleep) we decide we'll go to an ATM next morning, take out $250 each on our credit cards, and give Gerry and Mila $500 as a deposit. They took the deposit, and a few months later we bought the house. Arizona is now a part of our kids' lives, and a part of ours also. We go twice a year, on March Break with the kids, and in the fall, just the two of us. Giovanna's parents, Vittoria and Domenic, often come too. We would drive in to Phoenix and go see Gerry and Mila just about every time we are there. Gerry died last month after open-heart surgery. When we were in Arizona last week Giovanna and I invited Mila and her grandson Abraham to the house in Cave Creek for lunch, and I told Abraham his grandfather was a Jewish German Scottish American hero, and that I was proud. Abraham did not know about the year Gerry had spent in Scotland. I am a direct progeny of two World Wars - my grandfather fought in the first, and my father in the second (in East Africa) and if either didn't return, I simply wouldn't be here. I am so blessed, so lucky, that neither me nor any of my kids (at least yet) have had to do, had to give, what so many others did. I now live in a country where, in one province "Je me souviens" is so axiomatic it's on licence plates. And every time I drive behind a Québec car I think of Madeleine Thorel, and how it really should be, as she would say, "Je me souviens de ça". And I also think of Herr Gerhard Weber - a wee bit Scottish, a wee bit Italian. I would have loved to introduce my grandmother to Gerry, and also to Mila. My grandfather did the right thing in going back to France after the war to find Madeleine. Madeleine did the right thing in accepting his invitation to marry. Gerry did the right thing, a brave thing, going back to liberate his country - and Mila did the right thing too, marrying that brave special man. In a tiny, small, infinitesimal way, Giovanna and I also did the right thing in buying Gerry and Mila's home. Sometimes the right thing - for entirely emotional reasons - is simply the right thing to do. |
