Page 4 - Boca ViewPointe - March '23

Page 4, Viewpointe March 2023
The Highest Leaf On My Family Tree

By Robert W. Goldfarb I often walked past the Mormon temple on Manhattan’s upon Bar Mitzvah scrolls of great-great-grandfathers whose
West Side, certain its architect must have been jolted awake, names I couldn’t pronounce. My family tree was becoming
When I became 93 years old in December, I found crying: “Good grief, I didn’t build the temple in Utah; I heavy with announcements of first communions and Bris’s.
comfort in thinking of myself, not as a very old man, but accidentally erected it in New York City!” But the temple Together, Sister Evans and I began pasting leaves on a
as a leaf high on my family tree. There was something is in Manhattan and Sister Evans, a genealogist there, family tree that began to bend under the weight of limbs thick
youthfully confident in being a leaf holding firm through welcomed me to her office. Quickly, she became my guide with leaves that told my family’s story. It didn’t take long
the gusts of nearly a hundred winters. as we searched through ship manifests, proof of citizenship for us to realize how dense the lower branches were and the
There was also something hopeful. As my leaf documents, military records and birth, marriage and death bareness of the limbs from which my leaf hung. How could
ascended into the topmost branches, it was possible I certificates. One of Sister Evans first comments to me was that be? I was certain relatives I had visited with my parents
would find relatives, perhaps distant cousins I had never “I’m surprised that so many of your papers are from both to bid a final good bye were at least as old as I am now. It
met, hanging from still higher branches. How reassuring synagogue’s and churches.” turned out that the oldest of those bent people with grey hair
it would be to be welcomed by leaves higher than mine My mother, born Cecilia Bridgett Connolly, was a devout and dark clothes died in their eighties.
that saw no reason to fall because others in the family Irish-Catholic married to Jacob Goldfarb, a non-observant Fluttering above my leaf there were no Tommy’s,
had let go and fluttered to earth. Jew. My mother’s family attended mass at St. Malachy’s Isidore’s, Paddy’s, Jacob’s, Veronica’s, Ida’s, Sean’s or
Friends, knowing my sudden interest in distant Church on Manhattan’s West Side, passing through my father’s Rebecca’s. War’s, Spanish Flu, polio, tuberculosis, scarlet
relatives, urged me to subscribe to Ancestry.com. But Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood to get there. My father knew just fever, chicken fat, pork chops and smoking had shaken
there was something ceremonial in finding forgotten enough about Catholicism to assume girls who went to church their leaves from the tree. Vaccines, antibiotics, MRI’s, a
family not through an algorithm, but in dusty volumes with their parents on Sunday must also have reason to go there Mediterranean diet, exercise and routine visits to doctors
shelved in hushed libraries. I had read that genealogists alone. She did and they met. They married in 1929 and it is had secured my leaf to the highest branch.
at the Mormon Church tended a forest dense with family on the tree they grafted themselves that my leaf hangs. After a long silence, Sister Evans, now more friend than
Sister Evans found my ancestry intriguing, a stew of
trees and decided to ask their help in finding mine. Catholics and Jews, of Irish, Russians and Poles, of Sullivan’s guide, turned to me and said, “Bob, no one in your family
lived as long as you have. I was hoping we would find one
Wildlife who said “chutzpah.” The Goldfarb’s, Schwartz’s and Isaacs’ relative in all these papers who was older than you.” She had
become too close a friend to even think of reassuring me that
fled Eastern European shtetls, finding their way to the port
In Boca Pointe of Hamburg following maps in languages they couldn’t I was healthy enough to live deeper into my nineties.
We shook hands goodbye--you don’t hug Mormon ladies--

understand. The Connolly’s, Quinn’s, Sullivan’s and Malon’s
and I went out into the noisy street., clutching the volume thick
left blighted potato fields in County Sligo and boarded ship
in Cork. Both families made their way deep into steerage, with my family’s story. As I walked home, I wondered less about
Have you captured any images carrying with them family trees they would plant in more how long my leaf would clutch its branch and more about how
nurturing soil.
I would live the seasons before it fell.
of Wildlife in Boca Pointe? Returning time and again to the Mormon temple, I
brought Sister Evans yellowed pages inked in script no Bob’s articles have appeared in The New York Times,
We’d love to publish your pictures in our new section longer taught. Together, we found a Connolly killed in the The San Francisco Chronicle and in Next Avenue, the
Wildlife in Boca Pointe! Argonne Forest in 1918, an Isaacs’ who married a Goldfarb publication of the Public Broadcasting Service. His book,
Please tell us where the photo was taken. Your photos may in a synagogue as they passed through Bialystok, Poland. “What’s Stopping Me From Getting Ahead?” was published
be published in The Viewpointe! Baptismal certificates from churches in Ireland were heaped by McGraw Hill and is in five languages. 
Send your photos to lisa.cammaleri@fsresidential.com. 

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Eating the fish just caught in La Paz lagoon.
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