Unbeknownst

Small world.

My father’s granddaughter almost (unbeknownst) married his best friend’s grandson.

* * * * *

Growing up in Newark, my father was from one side of the tracks (Runyon Street, South Side High) and my mother was from the other (Chancellor Avenue, Weequahic High).

On Runyon Street his family rented an apartment above a butcher shop. Next door lived the Feldman family. Irv Welzer played ball with and gradually became best friends with Seymour (“Butch”) Feldman.

When Butch grew up he had a wholesale meat distribution business. Irv and Butch remained very good friends, playing softball in the same leagues, bowling together, etc. etc. I tagged along and knew Butch well. A tragedy was that he contracted leukemia in his thirties and died at something like age 36 in 1961. My whole family was very upset about it.

Meanwhile, my mother’s sister had married Bert Kartzman, who worked with his father, Julius, at Kartzman’s delicatessen. They didn’t get along. Julius threw Bert out.

After Butch died, his wife, Sylvia, didn’t want to run their business, she wanted to sell it. My father took Bert over to see her and she sold the business to Bert. For a while, as a transition, Butch’s son, Paul, continued to work on the meat distribution truck, working for Bert. Bert’s son, my cousin Sandy, worked with Paul on the truck.

Paul Feldman became a doctor and moved away to the Boston area. His first son, Shane, was born deaf. As Shane grew up the Feldmans wanted the best schooling situation they could find for him. On a summer vacation Paul’s wife, Carina, met and got into a conversation with a woman from Rockville, MD who also had a deaf son. That woman had moved from Brooklyn to Rockville because of the special program the local school system had for servicing and integrating deaf students. They used a technique called “Cued Speech” along with sign language. Paul and Carina got enthusiastic about it and they moved to Rockville.

The woman from Brooklyn was Sarina Roffe, mother of Simon Roffe. In Rockville the Roffes and the Feldmans became very friendly and Simon’s best friend became Shane Feldman (Butch’s grandson).

For college, Shane attended the National Technical Institute for the Deaf (NTID) in Rochester, NY. There he met my daughter, Nicole (Irv’s granddaughter).

Shane wound up marrying Nicole’s friend, Julie. Nicole wound up marrying Shane’s friend, Simon.

The grandfathers (Irv and Butch) were so close that they were almost like family. Maybe Fate thought it would be too incestuous to have Irv’s granddaughter marry Butch’s grandson. (Unbeknownst . . . Shane and Nicole never had an inkling of any long-ago family associations).