Goodbye, Jerry

An old poem

The following is posted by a new author of this blog, Jasper Davidoff.

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I was looking around my email and I found an old poem that Grandpa Jerry sent me. Maybe because I live in Illinois or just cause it was special to him.  He told me that it was the first poem he memorized. These are his exact words:

What follows is, except for nursery rhymes, the first poem I memorized. I think I was about eleven years old.

 

You will enjoy the poem more if you look up two words:

portentous

and

dreadnaught.

 

I remember, way back in 1941, reciting the poem at Lincoln's house when I went to Springfield with my mother, my father and my brother. 

And here is the poem:

Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight
(In Springfield, Illinois)
 
IT is portentous, and a thing of state
That here at midnight, in our little town
A mourning figure walks, and will not rest,
Near the old court-house pacing up and down,
 
Or by his homestead, or in shadowed yards         
He lingers where his children used to play,
Or through the market, on the well-worn stones
He stalks until the dawn-stars burn away.
 
A bronzed, lank man! His suit of ancient black,
A famous high top-hat and plain worn shawl  
Make him the quaint great figure that men love,
The prairie-lawyer, master of us all.
 
He cannot sleep upon his hillside now.
He is among us:—as in times before!
And we who toss and lie awake for long,  
Breathe deep, and start, to see him pass the door.
 
His head is bowed. He thinks of men and kings.
Yea, when the sick world cries, how can he sleep?
Too many peasants fight, they know not why;
Too many homesteads in black terror weep.  
 
The sins of all the war-lords burn his heart.
He sees the dreadnaughts scouring every main.

He carries on his shawl-wrapped shoulders now
The bitterness, the folly and the pain.
 
He cannot rest until a spirit-dawn  
Shall come;—the shining hope of Europe free:
A league of sober folk, the Workers' Earth,
Bringing long peace to Cornland, Alp and Sea.
 
It breaks his heart that men must murder still,
That all his hours of travail here for men  
Seem yet in vain. And who will bring white peace
That he may sleep upon his hill again?

--Jasper D.

Jerry's grandson

The Cross-Country Trip, 70 Years Later

This coming summer will mark the 70th anniversary of the famous cross-country driving trip taken by Jerry and his brother, Paul, and their parents, Bernard "Bernie" and Mildred Davidoff. It was the summer before Pearl Harbor. The trip began on the hot and humid midsummer afternoon of Thursday, July 31, 1941. Jerry had turned 15 years old at the beginning of the month. Paul had turned 12 on Valentine's Day. They stopped to say goodbye to Uncle Milton Davidoff on their way across Manhattan to New Jersey.

My cousin Carla Davidoff of New Paltz, New York, the second of Paul's four children, found in her family papers a diary of the trip apparently kept mostly by Jerry (his handwriting is quite distinctive, even at that age) but occasionally by the other members of the family.

I propose to use Google Maps, Wikipedia, photos, and other tools to help us imagine that famous trip. I consider the diary of this trip to be one of the most important artifacts we have of Dad's life (and Paul's, for that matter) as the cross-country trip must surely have been formative in developing a sense of the American idea for both boys, and eventually for their children and grandchildren.

While no one alive today was on the trip, I think the trip is important to us all because it could not have helped but break the family out of the New York enclave in which they lived. Of all the many, many trips Mildred and Bernie took throughout the world in their lifetime, I think none was more important than this motoring trip across America with their sons.

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DAY ONE: THURSDAY, JULY 31ST, 1941

View Larger Map


Map Key: A=Long Beach, B=Midtown Tunnel, C=Holland Tunnel, D=Plainfield, N.J., E=Easton, Pa., F=Bethlehem, Pa.

4:00 p.m. (E.D.T.)
Long Beach, L.I.

Left Long Beach, weather cloudy and overcast. Back and Front seats crowded to the filling point with baggage and Davidoffs. Hit Midtown Tunnel at 5:00. Out at 5:02. Made Holland Tunnel at 5:44 after taking pictures down town and meeting Milton. Out of tunnel at 5:47. Now we're out of N.Y.C..

Sky still overcast, but it is hotter and more humid than at the beach. Had dinner at Howard Johnson's, Plainfield, N.J., at 6:25.

Hit into thunderstorm at 8:20 — Stopped to keep out of rain at 8:40, started at 8:50 —

Passed through Easton [Pennsylvania] at 9:00

This is a boom town or anyway at present it is booming.

It was almost ten when we hit Bethlehem and stayed at the Hotel Bethlehem. Did 110 miles today.

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I love how Bernie and Mildred drove through the evening to make sure they were out of Metropolitan New York before hitting the hay for the night. Maybe they had a reservation in Bethlehem and were determined to get there before stopping for the night.

Does anyone know why this trip would have started in Long Beach, Long Island, rather than from Sunnyside Gardens in Queens? If Mildred and Bernie and the boys stopped to see Milton in Manhattan, might they have seen other relatives in Long Beach? Who lived there? Perhaps they swam on the south shore beach before heading into the city and across New Jersey to Pennsylvania's Lehigh Valley for the night. Please provide answers in the comments.

There is still a Howard Johnson's on U.S. 22 in Plainfield, New Jersey. Cannot tell, but it looks like a mid-century lodging entrance in the photo. The town is also the home of the First Unitarian Society of Plainfield, where my partner, Rev. Marta Morris Flanagan, served as an intern minister. She was ordained by the congregation there 22 years ago. 

And a surprise history relic, right off the bat: The Hotel Bethlehem lives! It's been restored and even has an eight-minute introductory video for you to watch.

The video contains a shot of the plaque on the hotel (shown below) relating the founding of Bethlehem as a Moravian community. I wonder if Jerry remembered this plaque and history when he encountered the Moravian traditions again in North Carolina, especially in Winston-Salem?

Here's the plaque, Count Nicolaus Ludwig Zinzendorf, Christmas Eve love feast of 1741, and all:

 — Doug Davidoff

A Davidoff Uber-Image: Paul, Teddy, Donald, and Jerry

 

I am glad to finally post the image above. Mom gave the original to me about three months ago. It shows Paul Davidoff (Jerry's brother), with Paul and Jerry's uncle Teddy Dawidoff, and with Teddy's baby son, Donald Dawidoff. Jerry is on the right. I wonder if my grandfather, Bernie Davidoff, took the photo.

I think this image is a great find. The original is a yellowing snapshot, and it's small -- about two inches on a side. I played with the image in iPhoto before posting it here.

Obviously, Donald is all of two or three months old in this photo, so it ought to be easy to date the photo. When was Donald born? Where was this photo taken? And what's going on with young Paul's suit? If you have the answers, please say so in the comments below.

-- Doug Davidoff

Newly Scanned Photos of Jerry and His Brother, Paul

Dad with a pipe at an early age. Paul looking handsome in a suit with very wide lapels!

— Doug Davidoff

Jerry Davidoff

Paul Davidoff 

 

Right on Cue, The New York Times Profiles Jerry's Boyhood Neighborhood of Sunnyside Gardens in Queens, New York

Photo of kitchen/dining area of unit at Sunnyside Gardens in Queens, New York, shows courtyard allowing this unit to relate to other units on the block. (Photo by Tina Fineberg for the New York Times.)

There are not many people around these days who knew Dad when he was a kid. But leave it to The New York Times to help us fill in this gap. On Sunday, November 29 -- the day after Dad's memorial service -- the newspaper published an article about a young couple and their daughter who make their home in Sunnyside Gardens, the groundbreaking urban design that Dad's parents, Bernie and Mildred, chose for their home in the 1920s and 1930s.

There's an NYT slide show of the Simonson-Nover unit. I especially like Photo #4, reproduced above, which shows the social relationships possible in these units, which backed up into a central courtyard. It's good to see that after 85 years, the units are being used for young families -- just as Dad's parents did when the development first opened.

It's fun to imagine Bernie, Mildred, and their two boys in a unit similar to the Simonson-Nover unit.

Wikipedia also has an article about Sunnyside, the neighborhood in Queens of which Sunnyside Gardens (another Wikipedia article) is a component.