MAYBE NAT COHEN — Sharon Mark Cohen

This year, I received an old photo from cousins I spent two decades trying to find. It was August 2012 when I finally found the particular Michael Cohen, M.D., whom I was seeking.

Clearly, he was a bit busy to be looking for the ancestors he remembered meeting in Elizabeth, New Jersey in the 1940s. Take a look at the bio of this husband, father of three, and grandfather of five grandsons and one granddaughter.

“Michael I. Cohen, MD, was chairman of the Department of Pediatrics at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine from 1980 to 2002. He has been a member of that faculty since 1967 and is professor and chairman emeritus. Dr. Cohen established one of the first comprehensive programs in the nation in adolescent medicine at the Montefiore Medical Center in 1967. It has since served as a prototype for similar programs throughout the country.”

To make a very long story short, Michael was born to my father-in-law’s uncle Nat, and his wife, Fannie. Thus, Michael and my father-in-law were 1st cousins. Upon my lucky find of the correct Michael, after years of trying, we had the prestigious doctor and his wife for dinner. We shared matching old family photos and stories, followed by sporadic contact over the past decade. In this day and age, we have so many more options for keeping in touch.

When I received the text from his wife in January 2023, I immediately wrote back that I thought definitely Nat, my father-in-law’s uncle, was the young boy captured in the photo and I imagined he was lying by his mother with his sister Celia sitting above them on the right. I couldn’t pinpoint who the other woman could be.

I added to the text thread with a photo of cousins Rima and Michel, aka Michael Mace, the first two children of my father-in-law’s eldest brother Nate (as opposed to their uncle, Nat). I was questioning the identities of the two young girls behind them in the picture. My guess was confirmed by the good doctor, who grew up knowing those cousins. The girls were easy for him to identify as the granddaughters of his and my father-in-law’s mutual aunt, Celia. Standing in the back of Rima and her brother were Joyce (Joy) on the left and Frances (Frane) on the right.

We knew that Rima and Michel attended the wedding of Aunt Ann, my father-in-law’s eldest sister, at their cousin’s Virginia home in the 1940s. We just didn’t know for sure that it was Frane and Joy in the photo from my in-law’s album showing them standing with Rima and Michel.

Feelings of regret raced through me for not finding the photo before Frane’s passing a year ago. Delightful Frane would have been thrilled with the picture from her youth, standing with her sister and their New Jersey cousins. For more about Frane, see Rejuvenating a Family Bond, dated April 19, 2018, and I Look Forward to Tuesdays and Wednesdays, dated August 11, 2020. Both the article and the blog can be found on my website at sharonmarkcohen.com.

Nat’s son Michael, M.D. (not to be confused with Nate’s son Michel, aka Michael) and his wife are feverishly going through old photos. In the texts, she questioned the identities of other relatives, writing, “…The child is not Etta’s as she had 2 boys could that little girl be Etta’s sister’s child Gerty who had 2 girls. Those girls were Francine and Joyce. Etta’s sister was Gerty. The pic of the four kids has two girls dark haired could one be the child Cecilia is holding. I am really moving along with these pics as Michael was 88 this year and I will be 87. When we are gone there is no one [with] the vaguest idea who all these folks are. Thanks for your help…”

Anyone following my blog posts over these nearly past five years knows how much work I have put into documenting our family history and safeguarding the memorabilia. That includes valued photos, such as the ones in this post, which keep the memories of our ancestors alive. I urge any other relatives with unnamed photos to contact Arnee and me to see if we can help identify the family members.