Memoirs

The other day I happened upon my grandfather's memoirs. These were never published, but were among the papers I found after my mother's death. My grandfather, Osmond Fraenkel, was born in 1888 and died in 1983, just a few months shy of his 95th birthday. He lived a long and illustrious life as an attorney in New York City who was active in the American Civil Liberties Union and tried 18 cases before the United States Supreme Court.

Yet, it was the minutiae of his life that fascinated me. When I knew him, he was a very self-assured, accomplished man. I was surprised and moved to discover that he'd struggled as a child with a weak constitution, that he'd been the butt of teasing by his classmates, that he'd been unathletic and had facial tics. If I had known of any of these things when he was alive, I'd have felt closer to him and I would have seen him as less imposing.

He described New York before there were automobiles and then the advent of their arrival on the scene. My grandfather wrote about the first paving of the streets! He spoke of the development of the first subways.

Remember how we all labored over the quandry of when the 21st century actually began? Was it the year 2000 or 2001? Well, he described the very same thing about the beginning of the 20th Century. 1900 or 1901? And, I was struck by that old adage about the more things change, the more they stay the same. How wonderful to glimpse the turn of the past century and to have experienced the turn of this one. Each detail of his life from the most personal to the historic entranced me. It helped me understand myself a little bit more. How very lucky I am to have this treasure.