HOW MANY PEOPLE HAVE A COUSIN WHO OWNS A TREE FARM?

HOW MANY PEOPLE HAVE A COUSIN WHO OWNS A TREE FARM?

Whoever thought we would take a drive to Jackson, Mississippi with our children? That was in 1998 when we were invited to stay with second cousins living there.

It all started with a dare. After working on our family history for about ten years, I decided instead of always making the introductions, it was time for my husband to call an unknown relative and strike up a conversation. After all, in this instance, they were named after the same person!

The call started with an astounding, “Shep Bloom? This is Shep Cohen.” After an astonished silence, Shep B. (Sherman Shep Bloom, M.D., known as Shep) must have been intrigued. My husband (Arnold Shep Cohen, Esq., also known as, Shep) continued, “We’re both named for the same person. Your grandfather, Shepsal, was my mother’s uncle. His sister was my grandmother and your grandparents were responsible for bringing my grandmother to this country in 1899.*”

We were greeted with open arms when we arrived in Jackson. We set out early the next morning when Shep B. jumped into his truck and led us to his tree farm, lovingly named Boker Tov (Hebrew for Good Morning).

The first thing he did, when we arrived at his farm, was to climb a tree while toting binoculars, as he scouted the area. He next picked up a walking stick, and off we went to learn about petrified wood and beaver dams. On our return trip to his house, we stopped at a farm to watch as peanuts were being freshly roasted.

About a year after we visited with Shep B. and his wife Miriam in Mississippi, Shep B. attended a friend’s event near our home in New Jersey. He stayed at our house and borrowed my husband’s red Thunderbird convertible to drive to the function.

The next time we saw Shep B. and Miriam was at their 50th-anniversary celebration, coordinated with his sister Gladys’s 80th birthday bash, on Long Island. The party was on the 2010 Thanksgiving holiday weekend.

Eager to attend the festivities, we left our children with a cousin visiting from Chicago and traversed the long drive across the Hudson River. We simply could not turn down the opportunity to see Shep B., Miriam, and Gladys, and meet the other members of the clan.

When we first met at my mother-in-law’s home in 1994, Gladys shared a photo of her grandfather Shepsal, my husband’s namesake. She also graced us with her presence at our daughter Rina’s bat mitzvah in 2003 and our son Moss’s bar mitzvah in 2007.

On another occasion, Nita, another Bloom-side second cousin, shared with me, her wedding album. See my December 4, 2018 blog post at sharonmarkcohen.com, Who Is That Couple At The 1948 Family Wedding? The album holds photographs of many of the members of the Bloom family, including Shepsal’s brother David’s family and their sisters Itka and Esther.

Nita’s father, my mother-in-law’s first cousin, was the accountant for many of his relative’s businesses and would often bring Nita, the bride in the story, to their stores. Nita showed me several well-used kitchen items from one of their stores, Bloom and Krupp [Krupp is seen spelled with one “p” at times, and other times with two], which she was told to take as a wedding present. Shep B.’s father Phil, also my mother-in-law’s first cousin, owned the Bloom and Krupp store with his Krupp cousins.

That’s where the old emails from Shep B. come in handy. Fortunately, I recorded the story behind Bloom and Krupp’s history, financing, and locations. When it opened in 1928, “Bloom & Krup was something of an unfocused superstore for the home, offering not only appliances and fixtures, but also furniture, mattresses, and household odds and ends,” according to Shep B.

Our son Judd and his wife Dena stayed with Shep B. and Miriam on a trip out west. By then, Shep B. had retired from practicing medicine and he and Miriam relocated to Salt Lake City, Utah, where they had raised their two daughters.

Over the years, Shep B. and I communicated by sharing similar interests and family history. A pathologist by training, an avid photographer, a painter, a true Zionist, and an all-around mensch, Shep B. was a true gem. This thought makes me wonder what he would think of today’s tumultuous world situation.

Matching our living room motif is a picture Shep B. gifted us of a photograph he took of cranes in flight. It sits angled on our daughter’s piano, consistently eliciting fond memories.

Cranes taking flight by Shep Bloom

Shep - January 26, 1934 - November 8, 2021

Miriam - December 25, 1934 - August 11, 2023

May they rest in peace, both born in Brooklyn, Miriam and Shep married on February 11, 1960, in Brooklyn.

On May 25, 2024, we were privileged to attend their granddaughter Maya’s bat mitzvah in Redwood City, California. We brought pictures of our family taken at Shep and Miriam’s house in Mississippi. Look for next week’s blog post, WHEN SHEP MET SHEP: PARENTS, TELL YOUR CHILDREN...PLEASE!, on Tuesday, September 24, 2024.

If you enjoy these tales, you will surely appreciate reading my book, Kitchen Talk, which tells such entertaining and informative snippets about many of the members of our large family.

*My notes on the family tree program include: “[Shepsal’s sister, my husband’s maternal grandmother Jennie is buried in Rosehill Cemetery in Linden, NJ (Rt. 1)] She sailed from Hamburg on the S. S. Patricia on May 7, 1899, and arrived at Ellis Island in NY on May 19, 1899. She was 21. Her father paid for her trip. She went to her father, Chaim, at 60 Orchard St., NY. Her name was listed as Scheine D. Genachausky [note, we do not have a history of changing the family name from some form of Genachausky to Blum/Bloom].

In one email from our extensive correspondence, Shep B. wrote: “There is a significant book - "The Destruction of Slonim Jewry," written by a survivor, Nachum Alpert. I got a copy from the Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC, but it is also available from Amazon and other vendors.

“You probably know this, but Samuel [Shepsal] used the name Blum when he entered the USA. He later officially changed it to Bloom. I wonder if his brothers had used ‘Bloom’ and he wanted to be in sync with them [My records show that David was listed as Blum in the 1920 census and Bloom in 1930, and Nathan used Bloom]. The photos you sent of the tombstones shows that Chaim (Hyman), who died in 1917, spelled it Blum, but his wife, Goldie, who died in 1928 spelled it Bloom. I assume that she had the name change at the same time as Samuel [Shepsal].”