COUSIN JOSELIN EXPLAINS — Sharon Mark Cohen

A page from my 70th Birthday Memory Book

Last week’s blog post, dated February 6, 2024, The Things That Stick in People’s Minds, introduced the memory book presented to me by our children for my 70th birthday on July 8, 2023. As stated then, what’s the point of having the book and not sharing the thoughts?

With just the right clues from my mother-in-law revealing all she knew about her relatives, I was able to find her first cousin, once removed…the daughter of her cousin Isadore, aka Irving. Finding Anita, aka Nita, led me to connect with her first cousin Shirley, who was also a first cousin, once removed from my mother-in-law, and a second cousin to my husband Arnold, aka Arnee.

David Blum/Bloom (brother and sister) Jennie Bloom Pollack

Mamie aka Mae Bloom Fuhrman (first cousins) Hilda Pollack Cohen

Shirley Fuhrman Linder (second cousins) Arnold aka Arnee Cohen

Joselin Linder

To find Shirley, I started by finding her picture in her high school yearbook and contacting the school from which she graduated in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. The story was in the Letters to the Editor of the Berkshire Eagle:

“Reunion helpers deserve praise

Letters
Jun 14, 2008
Saturday, June 14

I have been researching my family history for 20 years, and knew that my mother-in-law had a first cousin in Pittsfield with a large family. But no one knew of their whereabouts. Sitting at my computer in New Jersey, I contacted Pittsfield High School hoping that this cousin's children may have graduated from there in the 1940s. Sure enough they did! I did not know the whereabouts of any of the descendants of my mother-in-law's cousin. But the school secretary's efficiency combined with the kindness of Bonnie Smith from the superintendent of schools' office allowed me to get in touch with the 1941 class reunion chairperson, Florence Farris.

Florence did not have the contact information for her classmate, but she suggested I contact a man named Max Bookless knowing his sister in Florida kept up with her. I called Max and he eagerly gave me the telephone number of both his sister and also a friend who is the sister-in-law of the eldest of the cousins living in Arizona.

I called Max's friend, the only cousin still living in Pittsfield, and she connected me with her cousin in Arizona. I learned that they have been seeking family tree information for many years for a health study that is being conducted at Harvard University. I was able to speak with Harvard officials and gave them a complete family tree to work with.

Hats off to all involved in this family reunion!

SHARON MARK COHEN

South Orange, N.J.”

In April 2011, at a family reunion on my side of the family, upon landing in Phoenix, we headed straight to Shirley’s place. A short stay turned into two hours and 40 minutes of a very pleasant meeting.

Shirley’s granddaughter Joselin, an author, submitted a meaningful piece to my memory book that tells more of the story of their branch of my mother-in-law’s family (see The Family Gene Chronicles a Medical Mystery, in The Jewish Link newspaper by Sharon Mark Cohen on April 6, 2017). Highlight the link and click to read the article: https://jewishlink.news/the-family-gene-chronicles-a-medical-mystery/. Joselin has honored me by including me in the “Acknowledgments” on page 260 of her spellbinding book, The Family Gene: A Mission to Turn My Deadly Inheritance into a Hopeful Future (Hardcover), as well as by being a contributor to my memory book.

There are many reasons that I wish my mother-in-law was still alive. One is the satisfaction of showing her the results of our hours of talking on end about family and what I have accomplished with the information she passed along. Hopefully, she’s hovering around and watching from heaven, for it would do my heart good if she could somehow glean the rewards of this labor of love.