As I mentioned in the first message here about my mother's passing, there was a slight (ha!) complication when she began dating the man who would later be her husband and my father. He was Jewish. She was Catholic. He wasn't overwhelmingly Jewish and she wasn't overpoweringly Catholic but each was more than enough of what he or she was that it got in the way. Mostly, relatives of theirs decided it should get in the way and for a time, it did.
They dated on and off for years…which means they broke up repeatedly. They were fine with the diversity of religion but others in each family were not. At one point, they even decided it would never (could never) work and my mother went off and married some other guy whose main appeal was, apparently, that he ate bacon. That union went away quickly and soon she was back with the Jew.
Their love for each other kept bringing them together. And some of that had to do with Abraham Ribicoff.
Some of you may know that name because Abraham Ribicoff was Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare to President John F. Kennedy. Before that, he was governor of Connecticut (to date, its only Jewish one) and before that, he was the Congressman in the district wherein dwelled the people who would later be my parents. In 1952, he made an unsuccessful run for the U.S. Senate and was defeated by Prescott Bush, father of George Herbert Walker Bush and grandfather of George W. Bush. If Abe had won, we might have been spared two of the worst presidents this country has ever had.
One other thing you should know about Abraham Ribicoff: He looked like my father. Or maybe my father looked like him. It works either way.
Whichever it was, my father couldn't travel far in Hartford without someone coming up to him and saying, "Congressman Ribicoff, can you do anything about the sewer system?" Sometimes, he'd explain to them that his name was actually Bernie Evanier but sometimes, he'd shake their hand and promise to look into their sewers.
One night in 1950, my parents were out on a date and an irate woman stormed up to their table and shrieked, "Congressman Ribicoff! I've seen enough pictures of your wife to know that that floozie is not your wife. If you're going to have an affair, you could have the decency to not flaunt it in a public place. I'm going to make sure the entire world knows that Abe Ribicoff cheats on his wife!" And with that, she marched off to tell the world and my parents-to-be howled with laughter. I sure hope this isn't why Ribicoff lost to Bush.
Years later, after they had me, they would still sometimes laugh about that lady and tell me of that evening. Neither ever said this to me explicitly because it's not the kind of thing you tell your son…but I can read between most lines. I suspect that as the date progressed, my mother figured that since she'd been branded a floozie, she might as well be a floozie. Maybe it wasn't the first night they slept together but something more significant than just that woman made it a date they'd never forget.
Soon after, they decided that no matter what others said, they were going to get married. Bernie had briefly and timidly toyed with the idea of moving to Los Angeles. He didn't really have a career in Hartford — just a series of short-term jobs that led nowhere. He also liked the thought of living somewhere where people wouldn't keep asking him to do something about the Soviet Union getting "The Bomb." When he shared his toying with Dorothy, she liked the idea. If they could get away from disapproving relatives, this marriage could last a lot longer than her first one. So they decided to go west.
In one or two future installments in this series, I will tell you of the two things that totally healed the breach; that made both sides of the family accept and bless their matrimony. One was having me. The other was my mother learning how to make great latkes. Anecdotes to follow.