Wednesday, December 15, 2010
I was deeply saddened when Barbara called me to report that Ethel had passed on. Ethel and Charlie moved into the house next door to my parents on Van Cortlandt Street almost 70 years ago. I was 4 or 5 at the time. And Ethel's parents, the Winklers, lived near my great grandparents on "the Hill" many years before that. Our families have known each other for 5 generations. Relationships like this just don't happen any more. My family would visit the Wards every Christmas Eve. My parents, when they were still alive, and my grandmother, and me, and then Joette and her husband, Harold, and their daughter Naomi, and then my wife, Shiela and our son Aaron. Charlie and Ethel were there, and the 7 Ward kids, and then their husbands and wives, and then the grandchildren and then the great grandchildren. Even though I now live in NYC, I still own the house on Van Cortlandt Street, and come up about 20 times a year. Almost every time I will see one or more of the Wards in the back yard,or on the deck,sometimes with Ethel, and we'll visit over the backyard fence, or I'd stop over to chat, and go into the house and spend time with Ethel. Christmas Eve won't be the same without Ethel. Van Cortlandt Street won't be the same without Ethel. I miss her now, and will miss her every time I come home to Van Cortlandt Street, but I will remember her fondly forever.
