By David Kales
I knew your mother Alma Schwartz from a long time ago. Her
parents Lena and Eddy were good friends of my
parents. The Schwartz’s and my parents were among the founders and members of
the first and only snynagogues in Belmont .
Before their arrival from Boston , Chelsea , and other older communities around Boston , Belmont
was a pure Yankee town—virtually all white Anglo-Saxon Protestants—with a
smathering of Irish Catholics and Italians.
I first met Alma at the
Schwartz’s summer house in Hanson ,
Massachusetts
The next memory of her was seeing her at dancing lessons at
the Jewish community center. She was enchanting, unlike any other Jewish girl I
had ever seen. She had wavy, sandy blond hair, big, blue-eyes, pert little
turned-up nose, (rarely seen in the semitic race and baby-face lips; and
wearing a tight- cut dress ( unlike the
big skirted petty-coat fashions of the early 1950s) that suggested a small, but
compact body and athletic legs underneath.. In short, she was every Jewish boy’s
dream-girl. (And as I later found out she was every gentile boy’s dream girl,too.)
I remember saying to her as we danced together for the last dance of the lesson: “ I’ll be
seeing more of you.” Oh, God! What a cool guy I thought I must have been back
then!
Since Alma
was in the class two years behind me, we didn’t meet up together until she was
in the 9th grade of junior high school and I was in the 11th
grade in high school. I don’t recall, but we probably met at Jewish community social
functions, such as picnics and dances. All I think I remember is that when I
thought of her I I was in a state of
spring fever, puppy love—holding hands, walking down a moonlighted road,
humming “Gee but it’s great being out late, walking my baby back home….”
When Alma
entered high school, she was proceeded with a reputation of being pretty, fun-loving
and as a sophomore she made cheerleader, which was a very select group. All the
boys were crazy about her. She dated the school’s hockey captain and had no
dearth of secret admirers. However, she was not a party girl. Her mother was
strict and she discouraged Alma
from dating too many gentile boys. Alma ’s
free time was also very limited because of her devotion to dancing, classical
and modern. Weekends, too, she went to dance lessons
Since I was Jewish, I
had some advantage in dating her. As you
can see from the attached photo I got to take her to the junior prom. (Don’t
feel sorry for your mother. I did turn out to look much better. Some Brits took
me for Tom Jones, the British pop singer in the old days (1960s);others
reminded them of Jean Paul Belmondo, the famous French gangster actor of the
French new wave. I like to think your mother saw a little of Belmondo in me.
Besides her good looks, what was the other thing that I
remember about Alma ?
She had or gave you the feeling that she had empathy. When she was with you,
you felt she was really interested in you—what you thought about things, about
people, about life. Looking you in the eyes, she would ask you how you feel
about things, give you encouragement to do things you were hesitant or confused
about. I didn’t realize it until I read your memoir was that your mother was a
healer—a healer of the soul. ( Much later, I learned of others who were virtually “saved” by Alma ’s
empathy. Another example of her caring is when my father died in 1980, so many
years after we had known each other, she sent me a beautiful condolence letter.
I was so surprised and touched that she
remembered me and my father and family after so many years.)
There was a darker side of Alma ’s life. I remember in high school Alma held several parties
at her new house. Her father made a lot of money in real estate and he built a
ranch house on Belmont Hill—a very
fashionable section of Belmont ,
which was a very affluent town. At one party—it was the last of these parties
during my senior year—we heard shouting
and what sounded like fighting from a bedroom. Soon after, we were all asked to
leave the house. I later learned that the shouting and fighting was with her
father. And that this was just one of an
increasing number of fights and abuses of her alcoholic father to Alma and her mother. You
got to understand that we were so naïve and out of it in those days. The idea
of a Jewish man that is an alcoholic that beat his family! We didn’t think Jews got drunk like the Irish
and Italians. Weren’t Jewish families like the ones in ”Fiddler on the Roof?”
After high school. I
didn’t see or hear anything about Alma .
I went to Harvard, then to Columbia , graduated
and not long afterward became a journalist, working for Forbes, Newseek, and a
Far East correspondent, covering Vietnam
and Southeast Asia . I have been married
for 47 years to a very smart and very good
looking woman. We have a son and two grandchildren living in Denver.Colorado.
But a strange coincidence happened when my wife and I returned from the Far East . We needed a place to stay in New York where I got a job working for
Newsweek. My wife’s sister had dated a man named David Satchi, who was from a
wealthy Jewish Iraqi clan. David, who was out-of-town at the time, generously
let us stay in his nice brownstone apartment in mid-Manhatten. When we moved
in, I saw on the night table a picture of—it was Alma ..
I learned later that David was madly in love with Alma , but she said that
she was not ready for marriage and she was dedicated to pursuing a career in
dancing. In another incredible
coincidence I met alma
at a subway station. We talked briefly before our trains parted us in different
directions.. Before departing, we said we would get together and catch up, but
we never did. Subsequently, I learned
that Alma had gone to Europe
to study under a famous dance teacher. That she didn’t make it because her
body-type was not that of a dancer. I
learned nothing more about where she was and what she was doing. Until….
My family and friends were traveling in Maine
and we stopped in Bath , Maine Alma , sporting a French cap looking
like a Hollywood celebrity. I rang the bell
and knocked on the door but she wasn’t there. Over the years, I traveled
through Bath a
few times. There was the same photo of her at the studio, but the studio was
never open.
Then several months ago,
your memoir describing your emotional journey in search of your mother came across the Internet. What a
thrilling revelation it was for me to find out what an extraordinary woman and
the extraordinary life your mother had.
By David Kales / Journalist, Editor, and Free-Lance Writer
David Kales has been a journalist, editor, and free-lance writer for over forty years. His journalist experience includes Newsweek, Forbes, INC magazine, and foreign correspondent for the Hearst Newspapers, covering the Vietnam War and Southeast Asia. He has written several books, including "All About the Boston Harbor Islands." "The Phantom Pirate" is his first work of fiction.
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