Reflections on the People Who Have Touched My Life

These are the People ...

Harold Grossman: My Stepfather


He relished telling the story of how his mother would hang kosher salamis

to dry them out on the back porch, but that he and his brother Jack would

invariably eat them before they ever finished aging.


Harold Grossman was a gutte neshuma, a good soul. He was my mother’s

second husband and a good provider under whose roof I lived for a longer

period of time than I had with my dad.


Of his many attributes, there was one in particular that left me

with an abiding affection. Harold never sought to usurp my father's

role. Even though I lived in Harold’s house together with my brother Ron and

my mom for more than ten years, he respected the fact my dad was

just a short drive away in Chicago and with whom my brother and I maintained

a close relationship. Though I do not know what child support arrangements my

dad and mom had worked out, I do know that Harold supported me in countless

ways over the years.


He was a generous man by nature, soft-spoken and very dignified.

What Yiddish I know I owe to Harold. Of greater importance

than the words I have retained is the appreciation for the colorful

expressiveness of the mamaloschen Harold imparted to

me. What he remembered from his boyhood he recalled with genuine

glee and gladly shared with me.


Harold, his brother Jack, sisters Dorothy and Jane were blessed with

beautiful and wonderful parents: Morris and Eva Grossman, truly lovely and

gracious people, whom I was privileged to know as a boy. A tiny twosome,

Mr. and Mrs. Grossman were a handsome couple-one might even

describe them as “quaint”- each crowned with snow white hair. Their language

was a dialect of “Yinglish,” neither Galician nor Litvish. They sounded like

Myron Cohen. (Do you remember him from the Ed Sullivan Show?) It was exceedingly

difficult not to love them.


I believe it was Erev Shabbos when Harold, my mom and I stopped by to visit

the Grossmans in their apartment on Briscoe Court. The hour was after sundown when

we arrived. Harold’s parents would not have answered the phone had we called

them or, I suspect, invited us over that night because-much to our dismay-

their apartment was enveloped in pitch darkness.


Naturally curious why all their lights were out, we noticed them sitting quite

comfortably on their plastic cover-fitted sofa as if nothing were amiss. Not one

ray of light could be had. To this day some forty years later, I do not know if

the Grossmans had their lights on timers but had neglected to set them in time

before sundown or forgotten to turn on their Sabbath lights, but a fond albeit

befuddled memory it remains to this day!


"Pa," said Harold, always the dutiful son but who had forsworn observance

when he enlisted in the Navy after Pearl Harbor, "you're ‘gonna’ sit here in the

dark?! Just lemme tu ..."

"Zol zein shtil, Herschele! 'Don' touch!” barked Zayde who did not

pronounce the 't' in ‘don't’.

"But, but ... " Harold blurted out.

"But, but 'nuting'! Shah!" Zayde let forth.

"Ma!?" pled the son.

"It'll be fine tatele. Listen to your father," she counseled.

"Mom, why are we sitting in the dark?" I asked.

"Shah! Listen to Bubbe."

If only Mel Brooks had seen this.

We did not stay much longer. Leaving behind the magical, albeit dark

wonderment of Erev Shabbos in the apartment of Morris and Eve Grossman, we

returned home to a Friday night, however well-lighted.


Harold and his brother Jack were fine men, founders and owners of Jarold

Manufacturing in St. Louis, Missouri, who provided steady employment to many

men over thirty years in business. I worked there too during summer vacation

and came to know many of the employees whom I knew to be sincere in their

devotion to Harold as a man and employer.


It was my privilege to memorialize Harold. We are diminished now that he’s

gone, but the world is a far better place for his having been here!

"Zichron l'vrocha" ... May his memory be for a blessing!


Alan D. Busch
11/2/07