ZIERING

Though my grandfather Charles was one of the greatest men on Earth, I don’t think my grandmother ever got over dumping The Elsmere still exists, and has been turned into a condominium because it is right on the water. I met the Polish guy who the love of her life – and I think my grandfather Charlie knew it.

bought it from Rose who referred to her as “that crazy woman.” My mother Fran adored Aunt Rose, and I liked her.

My grandmother went to business school in Denver, and then to office work. She eventually moved Back East and lived

I did think she was a little scary – she looked like the Queen of Hearts in the John Tenniel drawings from Alice In Wonderland.

in Meriden, Connecticut, probably with her sister, Rose, I. Henry Mag’s wife. She married Dr. Charles and they took their hon-But she liked me, and I like her, and I’ve been told we were very much alike. Rose was born on October 19 (my birthday and the eymoon to Niagara Falls in 1920, then returned and started a family. They lived on Winthrop St. in New Britain, CT. where my same day the British surrendered at Yorktown) and it was said she could go out for 15 minutes and always come back with a story grandfather – now a veteran - opened his new medical office – having left Meriden. After her two daughters were born, my grand-all the time because “things always seemed to happen to Rose,” my grandmother said.

mother started a woman’s literary club which lasted a full 50 years until most of them died. The only non-Jewish woman who was The day she died in Florida, a basket of oranges arrived at my grandmother Dorothy’s house. It was sent by Rose a few days a member was Molly Crowley, and I grew up thinking she was a relative. The Irish were OK with my family, even in those days.

before, but I wouldn’t eat any of them because it came from the Land of the Dead People.

Dorothy became the president of her Temple sisterhood, the model of a doctor’s wife, and the glue that held her scattered bothers and sisters together. In 1939, when my mother was 15, she and Charlie moved from Winthrop Street to 44 Dover Rd.,

Dr. Jack (Jacob) Ziering

New Britain, a house I hope to remember the rest of my life. It was the first house I knew after I flew back from Germany with my mother during the Berlin Blockade. It was the house my mother and I moved back to after my father was called up again for (The same to whom this book is dedicated)

the Korean Conflict, and it was the house my father moved into after he came back home in 1952 as he was deciding what to do Jack was my favorite uncle. I think we are also lot alike. Jack was a teenager when his father Wolf died in Denver. Shortly with the rest of his life. I returned to it regularly until my grandmother sold it in 1967 after Charlie died.

before Wolf’s death Jack joined the National Guard. Jack said it was because his family was so poor, he could never go to summer I have visited it twice, and have thought about buying it.

camp; and when he saw a poster reading: “You too can go to summer camp! Join the Guard!” he just had to sign up.

When Charlie died, Dorothy moved into our second home in Avon – the one at 516 Deercliff Rd – and my grandmother

When father Wolf found out, he was horrified, because he had left Bessarabia to avoid serving in the Russian Army. Wolf lived there for the next 10 years. She died in my brother’s arms of heart failure on the night before her 83rd birthday. Dorothy grabbed one of the fur coats the Ziering Brothers sold and went down to the recruiter and tried to bribe him – no doubt just as he was in every way a lady. You could have long talks with her about anything, she never lost compassion, and I always lis-would have done in Bessarabia. But the Sergeant there was from America and needed recruits, so he and the dying Wolf out of the tened carefully to what she had to say, because it was so full of love and wisdom. She was a great friend and counselor.

recruiting office, and Jack became by his own proud testimony, “The First Jewish Cowboy.” (He wasn’t).

When my grandmother was younger, she had quite a temper, though I never saw it – except once in a while against my grand-Shortly after Jack joined up, the government federalized the local guard and Jack was now in the U.S. Cavalry. “They gave father, when she would yell at him. My grandfather would take up my hand and put me in his car and we’d get in car and drive me a sword and a put me on a horse. I hadn’t seen either before,” Jack said. His first mission was to help the government break off together, with Charlie saying: “I hate this horseshit.”

up the Denver Mine Riots. Jack felt sorry for the miners and said he used to give them rides back home at night behind him on his horse. His next mission: Chase Pancho Villa back to Mexico – and Jack did, under the command of General “Black Jack”

Rose Ziering Mag

Pershing. Then WWI broke out, and Jack was sent to Fort Oglethorpe, Georgia. There Jack was a cook. He said everyone in his unit went to Europe except him, and he used to laugh about it. Was it because he was such a good cook? He said it was because Aunt Rose Ziering was a firecracker of a lady. She had red hair, a ferocious temper, and was quite a character. She may be the he couldn’t fight.

“Roza” Ziering who was arrested during a Garment Union riot in New York City– although it could have been another Rose. My Actually, I think this was just another tall tale of his, and they weren’t sending anybody anymore, because the War To End Rose was the firstborn and daughter of Wolf and Helen Silverman Ziering, and she stayed in Colorado after her father died in All Wars was over.

1917. She taught cowboys in a one room schoolhouse in Fort Collins, Colo., was said to be the first woman who rode to the top Jack was discharged and enrolled in the Denver Dental School – which later was incorporated into the University of Denver.

of Pike’s peak on a motorcycle, and she was in every other way a “hell on wheels.”

After graduation he came to New York where he lived with – could it be Jesse Ziering, also a dentist? – or Mortimer Ziering - in She eventually came East to Connecticut to catch up with the rest of the family, and here she met and married prominent Brooklyn. With his family now in Meriden, Connecticut (Rose, my grandmother Dorothy), Jack moved to New Britain where attorney I. Henry Mag of Meriden, CT.

he opened a dental practice on Main Street, two doors down the hall from my grandfather, Dr. Charles Greenstein’s.

I. Henry died in the 1940s leaving the widowed Rose and four children (Bill, Marvin, Hope, and Gloria). Bill had just come When I’d go with my grandfather to sit in his office on Saturday morning for what I assumed was an “apprenticeship” so that back from the War where he was in the second wave of the D-Day invasion. Cousin in law Sarah (Luria) Mag remembers a knock I could become a doctor like him – we would walk down the hall to Jack’s office. Not only was I friendly with Jack when I was down, drag out argument between Rose and daughter Hope in which Rose said, “No wonder you’re not married. You’re the ugli-younger, but I was friendly with him when I was older and living in New Britain. Jack was one of the friendliest people in the est girl I ever saw!” – after which Hope attacked Rose with a knife and brother Bill had to pull her off.

world, and loved walking down the streets of New Britain, and having people recognize him. He was the first of my relatives to Rose decided to run a summer guest house, first in New Jersey, and later when she bought the “Elsmere Hotel,” a 19th Century ever recognize Inez after she came to New Britain.

firetrap in Milford, CT. The Elsmere was referred to by the rest of the Ziering family as “The Vey Ist Mir,” but all the Zierings Jack used to love cigars – and cigarettes too; but his wife Esther (Friedman) Ziering hated his smoking; was a nag of the first used to go to Aunt Rose’s in the summer throughout the 1950s. Rose would stay up all night patrolling the halls to make sure the order (although with a big heart, and her chicken liver was terrific), and harassed Jack mercilessly from the moment they met until place wasn’t burning. The old Jewish men who stayed there included actor Lee J. Cobb ( Death of a Salesman) who spit at – just the day he died. I would go to their house in the West End of New Britain when I was going to Central and substitute teaching, because I didn’t know him as a relative, I guess.

and I’d bring Jack a cigar or a cigarette, and we would sneak behind his garage and smoke until Esther would discover us and let The Ziering relatives would stay there for three weeks at a clip; the men would drive down from Central Connecticut or up loose screaming. Jack must have been near 80 then.

from New York on the weekends, while their sisters and female cousins Ziering would wade into Long Island Sound with their One of Jack’s patients was a young Governor/ Senator Ribicoff, and Jack took credit for all his successes.

long black swimming suits (they looked like dresses) and “scull” water while they squatted in the Sound and gossip all day. Meals I’m told that he finally told his wife off when he was on his deathbed. Jack was in the hospital in Floriday fading away at were served in a dining hall; waitresses would be local girls from Milford– like our friend Barbara Petry who came from a German the age of 86. Esther came to visit him and noticed that the old man’s foot was propped up on the railing at the bottom of his bed.

family. Barbara remembers Rose calling her by saying: “Where is that little Nazi?”

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