Daddy

Norma Crown


I have written many bits and pieces about my mother, but for some unexamined reason, I have neglected to do the same for my father. Was it because he remained a shadowy figure, dead from a heart attack sixty-four years ago, or was it that my mother’s vibrant personality smothered my father’s unassuming nature and left me with vague memories of him?

He was born in 1885 in Yamnick, a little town in Russia too small to be located on any map of the area. He had three siblings, a brother, Dave, and two sisters, Esther and Miral. His mother died after the birth of her fourth child, and within a short period of time his father remarried producing another family unknown to me. The second group disappeared into history. My father never discussed them but named his first daughter Ethel after his mother Yentel.

He and his brother were apprenticed to tailors learning a craft they would follow for the rest of their lives. At the age of sixteen, to avoid eventual conscription into the Russian army, my father and Dave, almost eighteen, set off for America, arriving at Ellis Island in 1901. They immediately left New York for New Orleans having been invited to join cousins who had arrived earlier in the United States. They opened a custom-tailoring business which prospered and remained in New Orleans for about ten years.

My father never discussed his life there, but I know what he and Uncle Dave looked like at that time from a sepia-colored photograph in which they were dapperly dressed in three-piece suits. My father was 5’ 6’ in height but he looked taller since he held himself erect and was topped off with a straw hat set at a jaunty angle.

There are so many missing pieces to my father’s story that can never be unearthed. I have no idea why he never served in the armed forces during World War I. I never asked, and he never told. He met my nineteen year old mother through friends, wooed her for a year, and they were married on December 25, 1918.

In the next photograph in my possession, still very dapper he is standing next to my mother and my sister, Ethel. My mother had been born here and was a real Yankee in his eyes. He and she were not really compatible. Why she married someone fourteen years her senior was a mystery to me. There were vague rumors of how she had waited for a soldier to return to her after World War I and because he didn’t visit her on the first day of his return, she threw him over. I think she became involved with my father to spite the soldier. Do you see how my mother creeps into the story of my father? If I am not careful, she will take over the whole plot.

I need no photographs to remember my going hand in hand with him to Crotona Park on Sundays to watch soccer games. As a little girl of about five or six, I felt so proud and safe with my dad who called me his sweet patootie.

My father was not around much as I grew up since he worked six days a week as a custom-tailor, leaving before I went to school and arriving home at about nine o’clock. On his day off, he liked to read the Forward and listen to classical music and the news on the radio--our beloved Stromberg Carlson. I am sorry to say that I was ashamed of his Russian accent.

In 1931 while jay walking, my father was hit by a car, suffered massive injuries and was home bound for many months. At this point my mother found a job and we became a two-income family. I think between them they made about $35 a week.

I can’t remember any conversations with my father. He was a quiet man, but I knew he loved us and was proud of us. He had his first heart attack in 1935 and as a result we moved from the Bronx to Manhattan to be near his store. He died a week after his second attack in 1941 changing the course of my life.

Despite this attempt, my father still remains that shadowy figure, beloved but vague in my memory.