NOT JUST ANY FAMILY

The unexpected pandemic lockdown was the perfect opportunity to seriously revisit boxes of memorabilia left by my in-laws and aunt, Fannie. They had been cluttering shelves in our linen closet for about 25 years.

Now that I have been regularly blogging every Tuesday for three years and working as a staff writer for a newspaper, I decided this would be one good story and a chance to give my aunt’s friend Mae, whose family meant so much to ours, a well-deserved legacy. My aunt made it easy by saving pictures of Mae along with newspaper clippings about her friend. 

Still, my publications in the newspaper where I am a staff writer and my blog posts, titled, Who Remembers Mae Schnoll Federbusch? (article in the Jewish Link dated April 8, 2021, and blog post at sharonmarkcohen.com dated April 13, 2021) weren’t enough to find Mae’s relatives. The next opportunity arose a few months later for me to go to the internet and scout out any of Mae’s living descendants.

In the obituary for Mae’s father, Max Schnoll, the one who gave my grandfather his start in America by hiring him to work in his poultry business, I found clues on several of Mae’s family members. Eventually, I found one of Mae’s three grandsons through the internet, listed in his podiatry practice with an old email address.

Since the email address started with his name, I converted the second part to a currently more commonly used “g-mail” account. That worked, and shortly after, Mae’s only granddaughter, Shari, got in touch with me through social media. That Sunday evening, I struck while the iron was hot and replied with a 50-minute telephone conversation followed by some additional back and forth emails.

Shari said she was “blown away” when she read my article. I learned from Shari that Mae and her family lived with Mae’s parents and brother and sister-in-law and their family in the house built by Shari’s great-grandfather, Mae’s father, Max. Mae played a grand piano at 573 Varsity Road. Shari recalled the house as being like an overflowing museum.

When her father and his younger brother were growing up, Shari recounted, they were the only Jewish family living in the Tuxedo Park section of South Orange. From the window one day, Mae heard neighborhood children say to her younger son, “Let’s play kill the Jews.” Since the child was only four, Shari added, “[Mae] had to call him in and explain that he was Jewish and couldn’t do that.”

Like a version of The Telephone Game, the whispers kept going until it seemed that everyone in Mae’s family heard about my article. I received word from Mae’s nephew Alan and her great-niece, Rachel. Rachel and I also had a lengthy conversation rehashing her years of visits to the Schnoll/Federbusch house in South Orange. That house sits blocks from where my husband and I have been living for 40 years.

Rachel’s grandparents were the other couple who bunkered down in the Schnoll family house. They each had chores, she noted, and Mae was the family cook. She thanked me for keeping Mae’s memory alive, acknowledging that she was "really special to everyone in the family." She added that it was gratifying to see her through the lens we saw her and remarked that she had a hard life cooking for the family and not much activity outside the house other than her volunteer work.

Little things matter, even the original green color of the now red shutters, and hearing other detailed-filled memories from Shari and Rachel added to the grandeur of our neighborhood. They each talked about the poultry business of their ancestry. Going into depth, Rachel described how one company was owned by the Schnoll family and the other by the Federbusch clan. I learned that the businesses were in Passaic and Union, New Jersey.

One family business, it was noted by Rachel, sold kosher chickens, and the other carried non-kosher stock. One agreed to split their stock with half frozen chicken inventory and successfully sold the business to White Rose. The other, arguing that the customers would not go for frozen chickens, Rachel reminisced, never did well and that chicken market failed.

I felt tremendously gratified that Rachel told me that she gave copies of my article to her three children, aged 19, 17 and 16. The future generations are the ones who have the most to gain from my recorded family stories. Hopefully, in this minimalist generation, they’ll find a place to save the writing about their ancestry.

Shari added that her paternal grandparents, as my paternal grandparents, were cousins before marriage. “As my father turns 98, I feel we have connected for a reason,” Shari emailed, “Thank you for the lovely tribute to my grandmother and her family that you wrote. It was like a closet door opened and memories came pouring out.”

Aside from the heartwarming conversations with my new friends, nothing could have been as satisfying as receiving a 1930 black and white photograph of a family wedding that took place at the Schnoll/Federbusch homestead. Quickly, I sent off a copy to my friend Connie, mentioned in the article, who supervised the volunteers at the E.O.V.A. where Mae volunteered.

My friend immediately replied that she picked out Mae before seeing my second email, noting Mae’s position, seated front left. Talk about satisfaction! RIP Aunt Fannie. You and your friends are not forgotten.

August 31, 2021 - House at 573 Varsity Road in South Orange, New Jersey that Max Schnoll built - with new steps and old paint being removed. Looking forward to capturing the newly painted version on one of our daily neighborhood walks in the near future.

Side of 573 Varsity Road with red shutters positioned by the tree - I felt like telling the painters that originally the shutters were green!

573 Varsity Road, South Orange, New Jersey Rachel suggested that her father, Steven Schnoll, contact me-we’ve begun an email correspondence

This is the picture of Steven Schnoll’s childhood house freshly painted - September 13,. 2021

Mae Schnoll Federbusch with my aunt, Fannie Mark photo undated