My mother, Lillian (1887-1974), was born in Baltimore, Md., the oldest of 12 children of wealthy, Orthodox parents. She married my father, Edward, in 1911 in her parent’s living room.
She was always healthy, fashionable, extroverted, articulate, sociable and warm-spirited. She cuddled her three children, read them to sleep, directed the live-in cook and nursemaid as to their meals, always wrote them rhymes on their birthdays, graduations or other celebrations, and helped with their homework and social development. She attended classes on psychology and Freud.
Earlier on she decided that her older son, Jonas, should be a doctor (which he was after graduating from Johns Hopkins Medical School in 1940), and I, the younger over-talkative son should be a lawyer (which I am after graduating from Stanford Law School in 1950).
Our sister, the youngest, as been a housewife and mother of two.
When we were away at school and later in the Navy and infantry in World War II, mother wrote each of us at least three times a week — long, loving detailed letters. I have kept all mine in stand-up manila folders, arranged chronologically with the replies I wrote to her and my dad, often the one-and-a-half-page v-mail stationery the military provided — which she, of course, also saved.
Dad died in 1947 of a heart attack a few weeks after learning I was going into infantry combat in the Pacific Theater. Mother made a sensible adjustment. What a lovable, memorable mom! She is still always with me…