GREENSTEIN

Benny used to sleep on my grandmother’s floor in New Britain when he was between gigs and/or out of work. My grand—

After his mother died, Jerry couldn’t stand the thought of living in Connecticut any longer, and so he packed up his six packs mother didn’t like him.

and his cigarettes and took a job in Princeton, NJ where his smoking and drinking finally caught up with him, and he where died I think that’s one reason why, when I told the family I would rather be an actor than a doctor if they wanted to know the truth, of throat cancer – age 58.

and major in drama at Maryland, the family almost wept over my memory until I relented.

Benny traveled from London to Europe, to Australia, and all over North America, and material about his career is collected

Francine Barbara Greenstein

in the Entertainment Library near Times Square. By the time Benny died in 1962, his career had long since been finished. He and Marilyn had no children.

Francine (b. 1924) is my mother, and is thankfully very much alive (now 88); she is someone who I talk with every day and I wish I had met Benny Ross, because I have always admired the cheesey head shot of him we kept in its frame on the wall: whom Inez emails regularly; someone who has been around so long and is still such a valued counselor. My mother was born in A man-boy draped in a cheap tuxedo, wearing a giant watch that looked like a toy, an sporting an imitation smile, with his hands New Britain, the younger sister to Helen. She was a very bright child and, because in those days they “skipped” bright students in crossed in front of him, as if protecting his balls. My grandmother Dorothy Ziering Greenstein couldn’t stand the sight of him –

school, she graduated from New Britain High school in 1941 (in the January class) age 16. The school authorities had wanted to even after he died – but she wouldn’t get rid of his picture until my grandfather Charles was gone.

skip her a third time, but her mother, my grandmother Dorothy, thought she had been skipped enough.

I kept it prominently on the wall in our TV room because I liked to look at him. When I’d come home from Maryland, I’d Mom applied to the University of Maryland where my father was going, but Maryland rejected her. So she went to Brenau find it turned face to the wall; and I’d turn it around again. One summer, I noticed that the photo was gone. I asked my mother College, Gainesville, GA, to spend the spring semester. It was a girl’s college which still exists. She didn’t stay very long and what had happened to it and she whispered that my grandmother had pitched Benny into the waste basket, and that he presently she returned to Connecticut. Mom was already in love with Dad. They had met when my mother was 14 and my father 16, and resided, and for all time could be found, in the Town of Avon Dump.

apparently dated each other exclusively – running off to a secret elopement in Towson, Md. in 1942, where they were married by a Presbyterian minister. They never told their parents, and had their “official” marriage in June of 1944, when my father was at the

Dr. Jerry Lavitt

University of Maryland Dental School, and in the Army. They honeymooned on Lake George with some of my father’s buddies and their wives – and with the puppy they had.

Jerry was my grandfather Charles’ nephew and was there for me when I needed him – like so many other members of my extended In preparation for my father’s dental career, my mother enrolled in and was graduated from Columbia University’s School of family. Thank you, Jerry. He came to Avon High School as a guidance counselor – and that’s when and where I first encountered Dental Hygiene. She lived with her step-grandmother on W. 72nd street and took the 104 bus up Broadway every day.

him. Jerry was short, hilarious, black humored, and – it must be said – a practiced hypochondriac just like his grandfather Sam.

After they were married, Mom moved to Baltimore, where Dad still had two years to go to complete his dental degree. Mom Jerry was also a chain smoker, a bachelor, an alcoholic– and a very wise man. He became a school psychologist after earning his enrolled in the Maryland School of Art where she excelled. She was already an accomplished artist, and this gave her the chance doctorate from the University of Kansas, Lawrence. He was in love only once– with an Irish girl from the Bronx who dumped to explore her talent while she was waiting for my father to graduate.

him to become a nun and marry Jesus rather than Jerry, and break Jerry’s heart.

They were always young lovers and remained so throughout their married life – which lasted 67 years. Dad and Mom lived When I would suggest to Jerry that his love life wasn’t over yet, and that there was surely a woman waiting for him, Jerry in many places – many of them postings in the Army, including: Camp Pickett, New Jersey, San Antonio, Texas, Blackstone, would say, “Bob! Look at me! Do I look like Charlton Heston?”

Virginia, Stuttgart, Germany, and Bad Nauheim, Germany. Dad loved the Army life; Mom didn’t.

During what Jerry called my (and “the”) “terrible 20s” Jerry helped me through my problems. I spent many many afternoons After we were evacuated from Germany during the Berlin Blockade in 1948, Mom and I went back to live with my grandpar-in his Farmington apartment (with his enema tubes dangling from the shower rod in his bathroom). Whenever I was quarreling ents in New Britain, CT. Dad was discharged a year later, was home for nine months, and was called back again for the Korean with my parents in the never never land of too early adulthood/ too late adolescence, Jerry listened to me and gave me counsel.

War. We traveled with him from post to post for awhile, then Dad was posted overseas again. I think Mom could have come with Jerry helped me grow up by cluing me in to some of the family’s secrets and setting me straight about the so many of the icons him to LaRochelle, France, and brought me with her of course, but she chose not to. So we waited out the Korean Conflict in New of my childhood – like my Grandfather Charles and his troubles with the law because of a botched abortion he had performed Britain, as we had waited out WWII.

which almost killed a patient, and the suspected girlfriend he may have had who was working as a secretary at his office; or his After Dad was discharged in 1953, we moved to Avon, CT. Mom was the perfect young stay at home mother (like every other own parents’ troubled marriage that, Jerry said, was the cause of his maladjustment, or the my father’s reputation, who, Jerry told mother then), taking care of my brother Rick and getting used to living with her husband again. Prosperity followed as did the me, was looked at by the faculty as a “pompous ass” when he served on the Board of Education.

move up to Deercliff Rd. on Avon Mountain in 1956 where our family continued to live for 30 years. My mother kept painting, These revelations were so shocking to me, that more than once I left his apartment on the edge of crying; but as I grew older won many prizes, sold quite a few of her works, was President of the Avon Woman’s Club, and was and is very popular. She also I was grateful to him for adding the yin to the yang of my mythically happy childhood and for fleshing out my relatives to me put up with all of my father’s hobbies, which often took him, her, and us away from Avon, sometimes together, sometimes not.

so that I could see both them – and eventually myself - as “normal” human beings operating in the push and pull of the trials These included: sailing, skiing, skeet shooting, surfing, and my parents’ annual trips to Southern France.

appointed to us.

When Mom was 66, my father sold the Avon house and they moved to Sarasota, Florida. There, my mother was invited to

Jerry may have just been repeating rumors or just putting his own slant on things; from my vantage point now, though, it join the Petticoat Painters, which kept its enrollment limited to 20. In Florida my mother sold many more paintings and won really doesn’t matter. After the initial sting wore off I realized that what was most important, was that Jerry CARED about me.

many more prizes, but my father ran out of money and his Florida fantasy was completed. They moved back to Avon to be He loved Inez.

closer to their grandchildren, and a few months later, at age 78, Dad had the stroke that left him crippled until the end of his life.

Jerry also told me that the guidance counselor who gave me a Rorshach Test and told me I had something seriously wrong My mother took care of my father until the very end. She suspended her life for him. Dad appreciated it as much as he could, with my psyche, was crazy as a jaybird herself and that all she used to talk about in his office at school was how she made her but he was able to do almost nothing for himself, yet dignity was still important to him, and my mother showed him all due rever-husband chase her around their empty nest naked while she was wearing his underwear on her head.

ence, despite the fact that he was completely dependant on her. Still, their relationship flourished, and Mom kept painting.

Jerry’s message was: If you think you’re the only one whose nuts, let me tell ya.

After Dad died in 2009, Mom had no desire to pick up her brush – when she did, just recently, she immediately won a prize I loved Jerry.

– and wanted immediately to tell Dad.

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