On June 16, 1979.....I was uncharacteristically last minute hunting for a card for father's day for my dad..at a Hallmark Store in Roosevelt Field.  I never waited to the last minute back then and not only did I not have a card...I had no gift at all!  My dad was in North Shore Manhasset Hospital and as the next day we were to visit for father's day. 

Try as I might I could not find a card....I was with my ex (boyfriend at the time) and for reasons I now understand but then I did not...I just could not buy a card....nothing was right and I just had to leave the store.

Normally, Reinhardt who lived in Manhattan would sleep in the basement when were got back late. That night....he insisted, though I pleaded..he insisted he was going home.....and of course, that was the best decision.

At 7:30am or so the next morning, Father's Day..I heard the phone ring in my dad's office.....I awoke and listened to my mother say something which I know longer recall but knew......I got up, walked to her and then to my brother....waking him with this dreadful news...I rememer the blur of calls, Aunt Sandra running over....the hospital and kissing his body one last time while my mother was calling me to leave the room.

35 years later, it still brings sadness to my heart and I remember all to well an old friend who said to me one day..."it's amazing what a difference just one person makes in the world and how very different life would have been."  1979 and I remember Mindye Fortgang's words as if they were spoken yesterday.

Rest in Peace my dear daddy......rest in peace. 

My dad served during the Korean war though from what I understand, he was stationed in Europe.   My aunt tells me of letters he would write back home and home very handsome he was when he finally returned home.

Among his friends in the diverse neighborhood of Williamsburgh, my dad called Teddy Jayme friend, who would later become my Godfather.  He became friendly with the large family which was my mother's ...The Velez family, whom had 10 children, 7 of whom were boys. Alan Shepard was my dad's best man at his wedding.

Mom -Gertrude (Frank) Lurie
Dad - didn't know his dad as he wasn't around.....

Siblings
Kathryn (called Katie) Kennedy 
Annie Cohen

Saw the birth of two Nephews..Mitchel Desmond and David Kennedy....

Missed the lives of his neice, Lara Cohen and her children Hayden and Jace and Emma.

Never saw his children marry nor walk his daughter down the aisle, nor meet his two grand-daughters Tara and Jeanine.

Because he was raised by his mom, had 2 sisters and 7 Aunts....he truly loved women and though men called him friend, women loved his good looks, kindness and fun loving clown ways.

My mom was lucky enough to call him husband and I was beyond blessed to call him dad. 

My love of the theatre...came from my dad..actually my mom said...you have to pick something to say what you want to be when you grow up as a contestant for the "little miss america" pageant...how about what daddy does? and thus it began....Man of La Mancha was a regular music melody in the home.  

My parents would sing or rather daddy would play the baby grand (self taught) and mom would sing in their ground floor Bayside apartment when I was about 5 or 6. I remember one costume was some chinese show children's theatre. 

Work did not define my father, rather it was his family who took first place in his life. He (and my mom) made it very clear...we, the children and one another were the center of his world....he was a salesman and later in life a business owner of Mynd Design....he made blistex cards for tools which were sold in stores like Walmart. Though he worked out of Brooklyn for Chopp, a job he despised, his clients included Great Neck Saw in Mineola.  We know that had he lived, his business was on the road to great sucess!

Because he was a salesmen, he never worked 9-5..and every single school play, event, graduation, test, party...my dad was the only dad in the room.  At a time when dad's went to work and mom's stayed home, my dad was everywhere.

His love was the theatre...and he did many regional plays and one film...though I wish I might find it.  The company filmed in Morroco and off he went for a month or more sending back pictures of him on a camel and stories of no toilet paper!

My understanding is the producers were arrested for drugs and the film was never finished...

As a young unmarried man he told of stories of working in the chicken coops and having to break the necks of the chickens.  He worked on Ice Trucks and somehow during that job did something wiht the ice pick maybe which left a scar on his forehead.

Eventually, he left the business, perhaps to raise his family with stability and in 1973 settled into a house in Merrick, NY. 

On December 6, 1958 my dad married my mom, Diane Velez at All Saints Church in Williamsburgh NY, which stands even today. (In an odd co-incidence, my former father-in-law celebrated his own birth on the same date December 6)The story goes that my grandmother insisted that she must wear a hat to the wedding and while preparing they had to go hat shopping just before the ceremony and of course, they were late!!! The running joke is that "we would be late to our own funeral." Which hysterical came to fruition....for if you look at the headstone....the date of death is wrong!  We never changed it, nor understood how the mason got the date wrong since the death certficate is accurate....as so typical of us that it must have been dad's joke from above.


Diane and Paul moved to Williamsburg, where Kim was born in January 1960.  As they moved East...first to Hillside Queens where Paul Kip was born.  When Kippy was named (Paul) my grandmother refused to call him Paul as in the Jewish tradition, you do not name a child after a living family member!!  So Kippy is how he is known to family and all friends from our childhood.  My father had the brilliant idea to name his children with the letter "K" since our last name started with "L."  Kim and Kip....the chipmunks. Years later I found the book "Kim" by Rudyard "Kip"ling and wondered if my dad, a voracious reader had pulled our names from this book.

From Williamsburg to East New York to Hillside to Bayside to Glen Oaks and Glen Oaks to Merrick, Long Island he lived. He was thrilled to own a car, then 2 cars, then a home, send his children to college....when life as he had known it as a child, was loving but poor. 

He adored his wife and she adored him....there's was a marriage of true soul mates and I marvel how lucky they were to have found one another. 

Born July 29, 1936 under the sign of Leo, to a single mother, Gertrude (Frank) Lurie with a sister just 1 year older, Paul (then called by his Brooklyn name, "Paulie") and Kathy (Katie) were apparently little trouble makers....on one occassion, it seems my grandmother lost her home above a hairdresser shop because my dad and my aunt-youngsters at the time, would go up on the fire escape and throw the pits from the cherry's they were eating, down onto the just "coiffed hair" of his customers.....

My dad graduated from the high school of Art and Design in Manhattan and took some college classes learning a bit of the German language before being drafted into the Army. He served during the Korean War and it was there he put some meat on his skinny bones. 

This is picture of Katie, his older sister by a year...(with me) and she tells the story of when my dad was 5 or 6..he put a pillow on his stomach and dared her to "hit him hard."  She did....only in his face, knocking out a tooth....apparently, my grandmother was non to pleased!!!!
 

Born July 29, 1936 under the sign of Leo, to Gertrude (Frank) Lurie. Joining his older sister Kathryn (Kennedy). 10 years later a little sister Anne (Cohen) joined this little family.

Paul is a decendant of the "Frank" family from Russia, though the name Frank had been likely Americanized when the fire destroyed all the records from those emigrating to the United States.

FRANK FAMILY TREE

As of August 2013 told by Kathy (Katie) Kennedy to Kim Lurie

Solomon Frank emigrated from Russia in the 1800’s through Castle Clinton (now Castle Clinton) (not Ellis Island) located in Battery Park. Ironically, a great grand-daughter, Kim, now lives in Battery Park blocks from Castle Clinton. Solomon later called for his wife Annie. She emigrated from Russia with their first son Louie who was an infant.

Solomon took up work as a furrier and they lived on the lower East Side of Manhattan. A tenement on Madison Street was one of their addresses. After Solomon either lost his sight or his sight was damaged, he opened a successful candy store. However when the depression happened around 1929, the candy store was forced to close.

Solomon, Annie and their children lived at one point above their candy store

They had one son who was run over by a horse at age 2 and died.

After or during the depression, they left Manhattan and moved across the Williamsburgh bridge and resided in Williamsburgh, NY.

Solomon and Annie Frank ~ deceased had 9 children:

1) Louie ~ deceased

“Uncle Louie, the only child born in Russia, remembers the winter storm of 1888 in NYC. He was a printer by trade. He took care of his mother Annie, who was bed ridden possibly with depression or nervous breakdown for 20 years. He went to the Jewish orgainizations seeking help with his mother and was turned down as they were only helping immigrants and they were now Americans. He did not attend his nephew Paul’s wedding to Diane though I thought it was because Diane was not Jewish, I just learned that it was because his remembered how poorly the Catholic Church had treated them in Russian.  Ironic as years later....Paul's son, his grand nephew, (Paul) Kippy would marry a young Jewish girl, Nina (Nina, whose own father was a native of the Jewish state of Israel) with whom he would have 2 children, Tara and Jeanine.  As tradition goes, you are Jewish if your mother is Jewish...Uncle Louie's great grand-neices, despite the marriage boycott are in fact Jewish by birth.

2) Sammy i) Married: Sarah ii) Children: Edward Marianne Possibly lives in Florida

3) Dora ~ deceased

4) Rosie -deceased

5) Ceclia ~ deceased i) Married: ii) Children: Millie (Davis) (i) Married: 3 husbands 2 Children: Alan Hall i. Steven Hurt ii. Jim Davis (ii) Francis (Fannie) (iii) Married: i. 6 Children: Michael Tamnack ii. Xxxx iii. Xxxx iv. Xxxx v. Xxxxx vi. xxxxx

6) Betty ~ deceased

7) Gertrude ~ deceased
(a) 3 Children: Katherine Kennedy i. Children: David Kennedy
Paul Lurie ~ deceased ii. Married: Diane Velez (Edwards) iii. 2 Children: Kim Lurie iv. Paul Kip Lurie Married: Nina Feinstein 2 children: Tara Lurie Jeanine Lurie;
Anne Lurie (Cohen) v. Married: Herb Cohen ~deceased vi. 2 Children: Mitchel Desmond Lara Cohen Partner: Louis 2 children: Hayden, Jace & Emma.

8) Evelyn (Raggio) ~ deceased i) Married: Louis ii) 2 Children: Michelle, Carol

9) a son died, run over by a horse at age of 2 – name unknown at this time

 Solomon, Anne, Louie, Betty, Dora are buried in Staten Island Celcia was cremated