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Elaine Cantor Obituary
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Memories and Condolences
for Elaine Cantor
Sponsored by Richard and Carla Cantor.
Gabriella Cantor
February 28, 2014
Dear Grandma
When my father came home
I asked him how his day was
Lines on his forehead emerged
Like crossroads
They lined the explanation of his sadness.
My Grandmother always quoted her favorite book,
Life Is With People
Yet when her life ended
She left so many behind.
My Grandmother was a history teacher
She erased crossroads on the forehead
Of every person she met
When she was diagnosed with cancer
All the pencils erasers in the world
Could not save her.
Dear Grandma,
If you had more time
I could have asked you to teach me history,
But even time
Cannot rewrite yours.
Carole Harper
December 2, 2007
As Christmas approaches I am thinking of Elaine, whose mother advised her to go visit during December the neighborhood where she was thinking of buying a house, to see if there were a lot of Christmas trees. Elaine protested that she didn't mind having Christian neighbors. Finally her mother explained that the issue was, would the neighbors want HER? Elaine was just astonished at the idea that these neighbors would not want her next door! I am sure her positive loving spirit carried the day, wherever she lived....
Lila Soll
April 25, 2007
Thoughts for Elaine’ birthday, May 2, 2007 by Lila Soll
As Elaine's birthday approaches I will lend my voice to the famous friendship that Skitz and Carla so beautifully alluded to in their tributes to Elaine. Her birthday has special meaning to the three of us, not because of childhood parties or gifts (which we did not exchange,) but because Elaine's birthday was the beginning of all our birthdays, May to July 1930.
Our early sharing took place for several years at the summer camp owned by Skitz’s parents. We were invited to the camp over Memorial Day weekend (Skitz was born on May 29th) and while her parents worked away at getting the camp ready for the summer campers, we had joyous times at the lake, on the grounds and most importantly with each other; talking, talking, talking.
We kept up the running conversation for years, through the halls of PS193 and Midwood High School. College took us in different directions, but the talk continued through the mails and on vacations. Even marriage, children and Elaine's move to Utica didn't get in the way of the conversation for very long.
When the big 60 approached, we all felt the date like no other birthday. Elaine came first and at a party arranged by her children, Skitz and I put together a running commentary of our relationship.
Much of Elaine's part came from a huge pack of her letters from college which I had saved. One of them, now in a scrap book, thanked me for calling her on her birthday, said how old she felt at 21. We rounded off the sixtieth birthday year with a few days at a Berkshire resort (without husbands or children) by a lake, in a beautiful setting. When our husbands arrived for the weekend and wanted to know what we did in their absence, they knew that talk filled our waking hours. Elaine, ever the historian, even recorded some of our topics. We agreed to keep our great and small insights to ourselves, except we let it be known that we thoroughly agreed that our husbands were three lucky men.
Although we did not keep to our vow to meet each year and spend a few days alone together, we did manage to replicate that weekend at each others homes and at a joint rental. On our 75th birthday, we celebrated by a visit to our childhood homes, schools and Jewish temple (Elaine's hangout) in Brooklyn. That was our last big celebration together, full of nostalgia, humor, and of course so much to say. Our birthdays this year will be marked by sadness at our loss of Elaine's voice, but full of memories and gratitude for a remarkable friendship.
Adele Richards
April 23, 2007
Remembering my friend Elaine
There are so many remarkable things we all can say about Elaine...and many have said them very eloquently.
I should like to tell you about an episode that happened in Utica which sticks in my mind most vividly. Elaine and Hal lived a block away from our home and passed ours, coming and going. Very often Elaine would stop in on her way home from school (where she was an ace-of-a -teacher, by the way) and we’d wait for ‘the professors’. I never smoked and Milt had stopped smoking years before, but I kept an ash tray in a kitchen drawer for guests who did. We developed a tradition of sorts. As soon as Elaine entered my home, I put on a pot of coffee and she went to that drawer, and then I nagged her about quitting. One day she raised her voice to me.”Stop it, Adele, I can’t quit smoking, so just leave me alone”.
Months passed...and then one day: I put on the coffee, we sat at the table, chatting away as we usually did, but I sensed Elaine was disturbed. Finally, she said “Adele, I’m disappointed in you...you haven’t even noticed...I didn’t get the ashtray...I’m not smoking.”
She went on to explain:that the night before she had looked in the mirror and told her reflection that she was now determined to quit, cold turkey. And she never touched a cigarette since. That was Elaine....when she decided to do something, she went all the way--heart and soul....and I loved her dearly for it...and I cherish her memory.
Caryl and Don Godiner
April 9, 2007
We have very fond memories of Elaine. She was always warm and gracious, and generously introduced us to her other friends with common interests. She had a unique ability to reach out to people, and was a tireless co-organizer with Hal of the wonderful Drama and Shakespeare programs.Her great interpersonal skills, and unlimited quest for knowledge, substantially enriched our winters in Florida. She was a very special person, and she will be greatly missed by many, many people.We are extremely fotunate to have been one of her many friends.
David Fischer
April 4, 2007
David Fischer, Elaine's childhood friend wrote the following to her children:
Your mother was a wonderful person in so many ways. She was intelligent, she was warm and caring and she was fun. We spent many pleasant hours together during our high school years and at the East Midwood Jewish Center. We were very fond of each other but when she went to Duke and I went to Williams, we began to lose touch. Massachusetts to North Carolina and back is a long haul for young people in college on marginal budgets and work programs. We corresponded sporadically. After her marriage, she told me some of the things she and Hal were doing and I told her of my activities. It was devastating to learn of her lymphoma, but she approached it and handled it (so far as I could see) with her usual intelligence and courage. I grieve with you. May you and your family be conforted among the mourners of Zion.
Kenneth Martin
March 7, 2007
Hal and Elaine. Elaine and Hal. I have never known two people more distinctily themselves who were also so singularly a couple.
What I remember about Elaine most is her unflappable atmosphere of competence. She was never at a loss. For a good idea. A necessary plan or fall-back option. An encouraging word. A timely snack.
Though years sometimes passed without my seeing her, when we met again, it was as though I had only stepped around a corner. The conversations continued. About New York. About mutual friends. About children. About the past and the future. Her teaching in Utica. Her research in Utica and in Florida. Gossip about literature and the publishing world. All sound. All full of conviction. All imbued with the sense that it all mattered.
Peace.
Ken Martin
skitz nichols
March 5, 2007
Skitz Nichols, a friend since kindergarten, read the following at Elaine's funeral and at a memorial service that took place March 4, 2007, at Bat Yam on Sanibel Island in Florida.
FOR ELAINE
I have no biological sister, but I had two sisters nevertheless. Esther Yarin (Elaine's mother) was a persuasive talker but it was my good fortune that she failed to persuade the New York City school system to admit her smart little daughter, born 1 day after the then cutoff date of May 1, to school a year early. I was 3 weeks younger. We didn’t even try. So there we were, she with most enviable blond baloney curls and a big flat taffeta bow, I dark with straight braided hair.
What we had in common was size and in those days, when we always lined up ‘in size places’, we were the two tallest girls in the class. We had to hold hands for every trip—down the hall or outside school, so we decided we might as well be friends. She lived across the street from me then which was bad because neither of us was allowed to cross without an adult, but when she moved around the corner to 24th Street it was heaven. We were in the same classes from then on, shared our little secrets and, especially, a long, long series of books, fascinating because the story took place in the South, full of Christian fanaticism as well as prejudice, beginning with Elsie Dinsmore, aged 9 and ending with Christmas with Great Grandmother Elsie. It took us years to get through them.
Lila joined our little circle and we soon became a trio of fast, fast friends, eventually walking together to High School every day, I protecting the frightened two of them from little cuddly as well as big friendly dogs. At Midwood High School Elaine and I participated in the same activities (even learning the French Horn) and where we had a bit of sibling-like rivalry for grades, which spurred us on to higher achievement than might have been. Elaine and I took piano lessons together, given by my cousin. Elaine was a good musician. I went along for the wonderful cake my Viennese aunt made. We three often lived for weekends at each other’s homes, getting to know each other’s families intimately, being spoiled by Lila’s mother who indulged Elaine with lox and cream cheese and me with chocolate cake for breakfast. My brother called us “The Sloppy Harem” and had a special name for Elaine: Passion Flower. She was the sexiest of us.
We got involved in serious literature — Kahlil Gibran read by candlelight. Elaine and I were taken separately by our parents to see Othello. We loved it so much that we decided to read it aloud at home and Hal would have been impressed that a couple of teenagers realized that despite the incredible performance by Paul Robeson, Iago was the jucier part, so that if Elaine read Iago, I was everyone else. You can imagine the scenes between Othello and Desdemona. But of course Kahlil Gibran and Shakespeare paled in comparison with the really serious reading we three gave to Lila’s oldest brother’s copy of The Ideal Marriage. Now that was an education! We went on triple dates—after the movies we’d share headaches because we knew that “men seldom make passes at girls who wear glasses” so we didn’t.
The three of us went to different colleges but we always caught up on vacations. I remember one when we big college girls visited P.S.193 and went upstairs without stopping at the office for a pass. On the third floor we saw the nasty assistant principal and we didn’t stop running till we got to the Yarin house on the next block! We shared the same irrational fears too! Our marriages made of the three, six and somehow we all loved each other though our spouses were quite different from one another. Later on, when the kids were grown, the three women spent a few weekends without them — lovely times during which we did or did not talk about the men. Nick and I shared a cottage with Elaine and Hal when our first kids were very little. Before the season Elaine, as was her way, invited everyone she knew to come up for weekend visits—and they did! We spent the days making kiddie breakfast, then husband breakfast, then guest breakfast by which time it was time for kiddie lunch … and so it went. But all that time we never argued, survived kid fights and were happy to share another year, not a usual thing among the other cottagers whose friendships often ended over household trivia.
Lila had the idea that we celebrate our 75th year by hiring a driver to take us to our old haunts in Brooklyn. It was a blast—the kids at Midwood High looked at us as though we came from Mars when they heard we were Class of 1948. We visited P.S. 193 and our old homes. But I think Elaine glowed the most when she stood in front of the East Midwood Jewish Center where she had spent so many of her after school hours. She even got me, a pantheist at the time, to join Kvutzah, a group of young people devoted to “living Jewishly”. We learned Hebrew songs and folk dances and she lived Jewishly and I had fun and met some boys.
We followed the Cantors south and it is largely because of Hal’s popularity and Elaine’s warmth and remarkable ability to draw people together and to her that we have such a fine circle of friends there. Elaine not only made friends more easily than anyone I have ever known, but she encouraged the formation of friendships among others. Her generosity knew no bounds. Lila’s husband Sandy called her the Gutte Schvesta and indeed she was just that. She did airport runs, shopping runs, favors of all kinds for everyone who did or didn’t ask.
Among the three of us there has never been cattiness or envy. I had two wonderful sisters. Now I have one wonderful sister … only one.
Marilu Finardi
February 12, 2007
Dear Carla, I have been thinking of you and your Dad and Richard, of your children and relatives, and of how you and I have been connected now for over 25 years by the landmarks that unites families.
Thank you for including us in your ten glimpses.
Your mother was a wonderful friend and my mother has often told me, "I don't know what I would have done with myself down there (Florida) if it hadn't been for Elaine!" When I was with your mom and your father I felt as though they were my friends, they weren't just 'Carla's parents', but people I connected to on my own. What a personality Elaine was! Unconventional, bold, progressive in her thinking, and so open- hearted that she even dismissed the prejudice of a German student after the Second World War! Despite the horrific evidence of the consequences of anti-Semitism, your mom decided to befriend this girl.
What was it that made her want to meet her?
I think it was the knowledge that this girl's phobia was just that, something based on irrational fear
on the very ignorance that your mom, as a history teacher, dedicated herself to dispelling.
I don't have to wonder how your mom must have approached this German girl. She probably did so with her Elaine smile: a smile that could melt any reticence, it was inclusive, it almost beckoned those who were a bit shy to come forth and partake. I think Elaine made so many friends because for her, friendship was forever feeding on its own momentum and the people who were brought together by Hal and Elaine all shared this brio. It was great to sit in at the classes your father gave. As a team Elaine and Hal were incomparable and in your mom, I could always sense the young girl passionately in love with her handsome, gentlemanly, kindly and absent-minded professor. Of her pride and admiration for you and Richard I heard through my mom: she loved you and her grandchildren so much. Carla, you and Richard have been wonderful children to both your parents,
I am sorry you have had to live through this, so soon.
A big hug and love
from
Marilu
Elaine Cantor on her 75th Birthday
Carol Belmer
February 10, 2007
Although I am Elaine's sister (eight years younger), there were some people who attended her funeral who knew her longer than I did. That was one of Elaine's greatest attirbutes, her ability to make and keep friends.
Aside from her family, Elaine had a passion for anything she did. She was an outstanding teacher, who took a great interest in her students and keeping them in school. She was an ardent activist, particularly for the underdog. She and Hal shared a love of books, theater, music, going to museums.
Most of all; a wonderful wife, mother and grandmother. Elaine will be sorely missed by all.
Elaine Cantor - July 2006
Carla Cantor
February 7, 2007
Carla, Elaine's daughter, read the following at her mother's funeral service, which took place January 28 at Riverside Memorial Chapel in New York.
10 glimpses of my mother
Many of you knew my mother intimately, some of you met her only a few times, and others ironically are only meeting her today. During the last weeks of Mom’s illness when she could no longer could communicate with us, I longed to hold onto the woman she had been and spent much of my time reminiscing. So many images and remembrances flooded me – the extraordinary and the ordinary, things I had experienced directly, and the stories I had grown up with, and I thought: When the time comes, I want to share these. The problem was which memories. What are the representative moments that make up a life? The answer, of course, is all of them. So being an editor, I assigned myself a theme and a word count: 10 glimpses of my mother in 2,500 words. Since I’ve already used up 175 of my words, I’ll simply begin.
Glimpse 1. Elaine, the cheerleader “Good morning, Carla. Look at the birdies.” That’s Mom, peering into my crib with the bird mobile. When I think of Mom, the dominate aura I feel is her positive energy. The cheery, upbeat presence. Her radiant smile and optimistic nature. How happy she always was to see you. You mean you also felt that you were the most important person in the world? Mom sometimes referred to herself a Pollyanna. A rainy day in Florida? Of course, it was her job to fix it. Mom, the “doer.” She’d always be looking for that “patch of blue” – no patch? - then, an alternate plan. No one would be unhappy on her watch if there was SOME action to take. Of course, not EVERYONE loved her positive aura, especially at 5 or 6 in the morning (her regular rising time.) Remember that birdie mobile? Well one night – according to family lore - in a bungalow our family rented during the summers in Wingdale, N.Y, my parents were awaken by the neighbors’ raucous party, And what was being shouted at 2 a.m. from the bungalow up the road? "Good morning, Carla, look at the birdies, Good morning Carla look at the birdies.”
Glimpse 2. Elaine, the trailblazer. Mom was raised in the
Midwood section of Brooklyn, (Woody Allen, a few years Mom’s junior, graduated from MidwoodHigh School) and Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg grew up in the neighborhood. But when it came time to choose a college, she turned down several eastern schools for Duke University in the North Carolina, where she would become one of a small number of Jewish women who attended Duke during the 1940s. In typical Mom fashion, she decided against living in the Jewish sorority, which caused a quite the ruckus when an exchange student from Germany refused to move into the dorm because a Jew was living there. Wouldn’t it be just like Elaine to win over the young woman, with whom she eventually became good friends, even taking her to home to Great Neck, New York, where my grandparents had moved after Mom left for school.
Glimpse 3. Elaine, the beatnik. During her early days in New York, working for a publishing house and taking graduate courses at Columbia University, Mom hung out with a community of poets, artists, political radicals and jazz-musicians, including the poet Allen Ginsberg. She also briefly dated Carl Solomon, whom Ginsberg met during a stay at a psychiatric hospital and addresses in his famous poem Howl, considered one of the principal works of the Beat Generation. As my father told me the other day, “your mother didn’t date Carl Solomon for too long, but she did take him to Great Neck to meet the folks.” The problem, he said, “wasn’t so much that he was crazy, but that he had been married before.”
Glimpse 4. Elaine, the moralist Many of you know that the Cantor family left the Lower East Side – the Manhattan “rat race”-- for upstate New York. Off we went in 1963 in my grandparents’ 1959 Plymouth fury – up the Thruway in to Utica, where my Dad had gotten a job teaching at a community college. Mom took her liberal leanings into this – to be polite - somewhat redneck territory. Our first Utica rental was a two-family house shared with a black professor and his family. My parents became members of the Congress of Racial Equality or CORE an organization that played a pivotal role in the Civil Rights Movement. I remember as a 10-year-old watching the adults in our living room strumming guitars and singing “We Shall Overcome.” Dad also remembers Mom dragging him to a demonstration in an all black neighborhood in downtown Utica to protest in front of a segregated school. Dad – holding a picket sign - got his photo in the front section of the Utica paper. Life was like that with Mom.
Glimpse 5. Elaine, the teacher For 30 years Mom taught at Utica Free Academy (UFA), a inner-city school with a diverse population. She taught general and honors American history and was blessed with brilliant students like Mark Danner, a prominent foreign affairs journalist, and Sam Wineberg, a Stanford historian who is the president of the Organization of American Historians. During a PBS interview with Wineberg a few years ago my in-laws happened to be watching, they were flabbergasted when he credited Mrs. Cantor at UFA for sparking his passion for history. Mom was tickled when we got her a copy of the transcript. But it wasn’t just the A students that interested Mom. She got personally involved with a student who had spent time in jail, another who lived in his car. Mom reached out to these kids; she wanted to make sure they got a chance in life, and school never stopped for her at 3:30. When I was a high school sophomore (I attended school in New Hartford, a suburb of Utica), one of her more troubled students moved in with us for awhile. But things didn’t work out so well in the short-run. Mom was a bit of a perfectionist, and I think that she could feel like a failure when despite her efforts, she couldn’t save the world. Her standards were so high. But her successes certainly outnumbered the failures. I remember a project she did with her consumer education class, another subject that she taught. Over a period of time, she sent her students into small grocers in downtown Utica to graph the prices milk and bread: The students uncovered that the costs of grocery staples routinely rose a few pennies the day that the welfare checks came out. I remember how I would just swell with pride when I would meet a UFA student and tell them who I was. Routinely, their eyes would open wide: “You’re Mrs. Cantor’s daughter!”
Glimpse 6. Elaine, who could have done anything. After Richard and I left for college, my mother had a bit of a mid-life career crisis. After all, when she married my Dad in 1953, she had been close to earning her master’s in international law at Columbia. So, after turning 50, she took the LSATs; aced them; applied to three law schools, including NYU; and was accepted to all of them. But after some soul-searching, she decided against going back to school, opting instead to retire from teaching in 1987. That was the year her first grandchild, Danielle, was born and around the time my parents - who by this time were SO ready to get out of snowy Utica – bought the condo in Fort Myers, Florida. Thus, for the next 20 years they became official snowbirds, eventually trading in upstate New York for a rustic dream house in West Stockbridge, Massachusetts (the Berkshires), and, then, the Peter Cooper waiting list phoned – you have 24 hours to decide whether to take an apt. in NY – and no, you can’t look at it first. Life became complicated with three places for awhile, but oh so much fun. Mom always said she made the right decision not to practice law in her late 50s, especially after her diagnosis in 2002. And by then, she had decided that her missed calling was actually not law school but rabbinical school (more about that later) Nevertheless, she would have made a damn good attorney -- with a specialty in pro bono cases, I’m sure. …
Glimpse 7 Elaine, the grammarian After graduating from Duke with a degree in political science, my mother spent time at a NY publishing house as a copy editor, a skill she wouldn’t practice again professionally but on which family members and friends would come to rely. Years later, when I was working at a New Jersey newspaper, the copy desk chief complained that he was unable to find job candidates who could score above the 90th percentile on the editing test. I took the test to Mom, watched her breeze through it, and brought it back to the paper – she scored in the 98th percentile. The copy chief wanted to know if he could hire her. But she had just retired.
Glimpse 8 Elaine, the glamour girl. Mom never thought of herself as beautiful. In fact, she never could understand how she had managed to snag Gregory Peck. (over there..) But she was beautiful, and became more so with age. She was what they call earthy and oh natural - with a touch of the voluptuous. At 76, my Mom had only a few strands of grey hair around the temples. She got highlights on occasion, but the chestnut brown was hers. She also never wore makeup, except for the signature red lipstick. She didn’t need to. That smile was all she needed. The nurses in the hospital couldn’t believe she was in her mid 70s. But what kept Mom young and attractive had less to do with her looks than her spirit. She had the energy and curiosity of a much younger person. The Internet (her beloved MAC) also kept her youthful. Oh how she loved researching geneology, history, theater reviews, vacation rentals, trips and trivia; emailing interesting articles and digital photos to family and friends. Those excel spread sheets that allowed her detailed lists to become even more organized. The typed-written labels in her address book. Her organizational skills were looked upon with awe by the other three members of our clan and we cherished them. Elaine was on top of everything, Mom got it, Mom would take care of it … which made the last few months of her life all the more heartbreaking.
Glimpse 9. Elaine, the friend Perhaps my mother’s most important attribute. Look at all of you here. Skitz Nichols (Edith), her best friend from kindergarten; Lila, who joined to make it a threesome in 5th grade, Barbara Zucker, who we know as “Bobbie.” She and Mom met at summer job in NYC when they were 16. I’ve known these women, their spouses, and their children all of my life (and now their grandchildren). Here’s a letter published in the New York Times after Lila, Skitz and Mom for their 75th birthdays hired a driver to take them around the old neighborhood. (Read letter she wrote to the New York Times about the visit.) “Life is with people.” was my mother’s favorite saying. I think it’s actually the title of a book. She loved company. Hated to cook, but loved to entertain. She enjoyed introducing interesting people to interesting people – making connections - and practically everyone was interesting to her. She was not a gossip. She was a giver. A sincere, loyal, principled and caring person who could find redeeming qualities in just about anyone as long as you weren’t disingenuous. She abhorred dishonesty and valued character. A small glimpse within a glimpse. My friend from graduate school, Marilu Finardi, is here today. Twenty-five years ago, Marilu and I decided our parents had to meet. We introduced them, and what a foursome they made. My parents adored Marilu’s father, Enzzo, an Italian gentleman who died a few years ago at 92, and her mother, Eloise, a Newark-born opera singer. The Finardis offered my parents use of their apartment outside of Milan – anytime. My parents took them up on it. The couples ended up living near each other in both NYC and Florida, and Enzno and Eloise became part of that Fort Myers-Sanibel Island network that grew and grew. I certainly couldn’t keep up with it – Dad’s drama courses which were just as much Mom’s, the Shakespeare Club, Mom’s book group, her involvement in Bat Yam, the synagogue on Sanibel, the dinner parties, theater outings … Skitz and her husband Nick had bought a house there, Lila often rented .. I think my mother got practically everyone she knew to set up some kind of shop on the West Coast of Florida, and of course. .. My family vacationed there for 20 years with all of these wonderful people. What will we do without her now?
Glimpse 10 Elaine, the wife Another role at which she did excel. My parents were in love with each other for 53 years. Three years ago, when Mom was in remission (which would last a blessed two and a half more years), she announced that she wanted to throw a festive party in Florida for their 50th anniversary - Dec. 27th.2004. We all attended – her relatives and closest friends, and she was beaming. Dad had bought her an emerald and diamond necklace for the occasion which she cherished. I believe that Mom knew the days were short - one of the reasons I think she also took on a huge project putting together a video of her and my father’s lives, which some of you may see during shiva.
My mother adored my father. To her, he was the kindest, most sensitive, and handsomest of men. She felt so lucky. And it wasn’t until five years ago, when Mom got sick that I realized he was just as devoted to her. It was hard to take care of Mom before her illness – she was just sooo competent. But during her treatments and remissions, which took their emotional and physical toll, and later her serious illness, Dad became her lifeline.
In July of 2006, a few months before Mom’s the tumor returned, she made him an 80th birthday party in the Berkshires. Mom spent weeks picking out just the right photo for one of his presents: A package of 39 cent postage stamps sporting Dad’s image. The gift had to do with a line in a play by Clifford Odets, the playwright about whom Dad had written his dissertation and had recently hosted a symposium on at the CUNY Graduate Center. I’ll never forgot how Mom sat in the front row taking copious notes at that day and night long symposium. And how at the end of the evening Dad got on stage to publicly thank her, saying how much he owed to his wife and how he couldn’t have done it without her.
Recently, Dad showed me the card that had come with his birthday stamps. in which Mom wrote: “I love you passionately. Passionately underlined. ” Wow. It reminded me of another letter Mom and written to Dad in an email January 26, 2006, on which she had copied my brother and me. Subject: A love note. To: Hal Cantor. Dearest Hal: Last night’s performance of the two Arthur Miller one act plays was so extraordinary that I can’t believe I had tried to discourage you from directing them. Your friends and I were thrilled b the acting and the size of the audience: I don’t think anyone expected mover 100 to attend. The love and respect for you accounts for that outpouring of support. But it was the raves afterward that were a testament to your directing skills. I’m sorry that the kids weren’t here. I’m so proud! In our next lives, I assume you will be a director and I will be a rabbi.
All my love,
Elaine
All I can say Mom is – That will be one lucky congregation. And in my next life, I want to be a member. I love you Mom…and miss you tons.
Thank you all for coming.
David Schwab
February 7, 2007
David Schwab, Elaine's son-in-law said these words at Elaine's funeral.
My name is David Schwab, and I am the son-in-law. I’m married to Carla.
I also want to thank you all for coming today. It means so much to the family. I know the love and support of those in this room – and many others who could not be here -- have helped us get through this.
I never called Elaine “Mom” – it was always just Elaine. But she was very much like a mother to me, and that’s no slight to my own incredible mother, who’s sitting right over there.
Here are just a few of the things I admired about Elaine.
I admired the way she made me feel as if I had a second mother. Her unconditional love, just as my own parents treated me. She accepted me from the day we met. She made me feel like part of her family. She was ready to do whatever my own growing family needed. She took an interest in what I was doing, asking about tennis, my job as a newspaper reporter, my whacky hobby of railroads. Of course she asked a lot about my extended family, which is why many are here today. She even asked about my friends. She knew about my college roommate Jonah. She knew about my good friend at the newspaper, Ted Sherman, and felt terrible when she kept accidentally referring to him as Norman, which became a standing joke.
I admired Elaine’s values. Her sense of right and wrong. Her liberalism. Her concern for the little person. You could see it in her passion for consumer rights, in the Farm to Factory project about migrant farm workers, in the way she cared about the kids from down trodden neighborhoods she taught at the Utica public high school. I wasn’t surprised that she and Hal became friends with my parents -- for they had similar values.
I admired the way she was a pioneer. She certainly wasn’t the first mother to work. But she was at the vanguard. Indeed, Ruth Bader Ginsberg came from her Brooklyn neighborhood. In my view, with just a slight change here or there, Elaine Cantor could just as easily become a lawyer and been appointed to the Supreme Court.
I admired the way she was not particularly impressed by money or possessions. Not that she didn’t know what affluence was. Her father was a very successful New York insurance executive, and later in life her parents moved to Great Neck and traveled around the world in retirement. But that wasn’t a goal for Elaine. She was proud of her relatively humble roots and never strayed too far from them. Perhaps the nicest home she owned was the place in the Berkshires, very comfortable but hardly luxurious, and she had few regrets when they had to give that up.
I admired the way she would never interfere. She did not force her opinions on Carla and me as we began to raise our own family. She and Hal knew that I did not come from a very religious background. They felt strongly about my children having a Jewish education and quietly helped make it happen. But she would get involved if that’s what you wanted. You could confide in her. And I did more than once.
I admired Elaine’s energy. The way she was up at the crack of dawn. If you moved to a new house or apartment, Elaine would be there, putting in shelf paper. My last private moment with Elaine before she got ill this last time was at a ShopRite at the Jersey Shore. Hal and Elaine had joined us for a week last summer in Ocean Grove. Late one afternoon, after all of us spent the day at the beach, I suggested I run to the supermarket myself to get some provisions. Elaine insisted on joining me. When we got to the store, Elaine grabbed a cart and set off on her own. She filled it up, went through the check-out counter and was waiting for me at the door.
I admired the way Elaine embraced technology. She could always be found at her laptop, and took it everywhere. She was always on e-mail. And she was very proud of her HotSpot, the wireless router they carried around with them.
I admired the way she was always On Top of Things. The way she got things done. Okay! The way she found the best airline flight, made reservations and e-mailed the confirmation information to me before Carla even told me we were traveling to Florida to visit her. She liked to make the reservations six months in advance if possible. You could find her on the phone, checking the credit card statement, the on-line banking statement, the cable bill, the fine print. She was punctual. If Hal and Elaine were visiting, they would arrive half an hour early. She was not a procrastinator. She put their name on the list for Peter Cooper Village and, sure enough, years later they got the one-bedroom apartment of their dreams. Every time we visited her on vacation, she would put out the word that I needed a tennis game – and she knew the player had to be pretty good.
I am not a particularly religious person, but this is why I believe her spirit is alive: I can see it all the time in my wife and daughter -- the next generations of remarkable Yarin women.
When I see Carla greet everyone in town -- friend or repairman – by first name, I might think of Elaine. Or follow-up relentlessly on the phone over health insurance bills – and win every time. Or keep the checkbook, clip the coupons. Grab my socks from the floor and throw them in the laundry – before I can put them on again. Jump up at 6 a.m. to get that story written. Pay that bill the moment it arrives. Get me to renew my passport months before we even think about traveling overseas. Take pride in hailing from the lower East Side and look askance at something posh or extravagant. Reconnect with old friends. Savor the time she spends with very dear friends, many of them here.
Or I might think of Elaine when I see Danielle working diligently on a paper about the History of Slavery, asking tough questions, reading the New York Times. Traveling around Central America, declining to take the easy path. Standing up for women’s rights. Blazing a trail of her own. Maintaining circles of different friends, from Maplewood, from college, from Virginia, from the job, from her trips. And taking pleasure in introducing them to each other.
Yes, your spirit remains, but I’ll miss you Elaine.
I’ll miss you…Mom….
Richard Cantor
February 5, 2007
Richard, Elaine's son, read the following at his mother's funeral service, which took place January 28 at Riverside Memorial Chapel in New York.
=======
For those of us who were close to my mother, we always knew that she loved us, she was proud of us, and would do anything for us. For my Dad, my sister and me, Mom embodied the essence of a home – a safe place where you could always go for comfort and advice, without fear of criticism.
Fortunately, we were blessed with many joyous occasions, when we had the opportunity to laud Mom’s relationships with her family members and friends. In particular, just three years ago, we extolled her marriage to my father at their 50th wedding anniversary celebration.
I am not going to cover this ground again today, except to say that the last chapter of my parents’ marriage was perhaps the most poignant. The depth of their love was never more apparent than during this painful period.
It was just about a year ago, when out of the blue, Mom let me know that she thought Dad was the most fascinating man she had ever met, and with him, she could never be bored. And, that love didn’t waver. Even as her condition worsened, and she lost the ability to walk, and then lost her ability to talk, her eyes never ceased to beam at him. Those glistening eyes followed him wherever he moved about the room.
And my father responded in kind, drawing upon a well of devotion and love whose depth I had never before fully fathomed.
Dad, I will forever treasure the memory of your tenderness toward Mom during this period, your telling her sweet and loving thoughts, day after day, keeping her spirits up, even though she couldn’t respond.
Beyond family relationships and the close friendships – which you hear much about from other speakers – what I think made Mom most special was how she interacted with the community at large. She had a way with people. Everyone became her instant friend. People from all walks of life were immediately drawn to her – everyone – her students, her colleagues, her neighbors, even people she met at bus stops and at check-out lines.
Over the last few days, I have been asking myself which among her qualities were the most exceptional, which were the ones that drew so many people to her. Here is a partial list:
• She liked people; she found their life stories fascinating; she focused on their positive qualities, and rarely dwelled on the negative.
• She was energetic, cheerful, and enthusiastic.
• She was highly intelligent, but she was without ego, and she was without guile.
• She was completely without prejudice, without prejudice with respect to ethnicity or social standing.
• And, she was an activist, a “do-er” who fought for social justice.
My mother spent much of her life living in places familiar to most of you. She grew up in the Flatbush area of Brooklyn. She lived here in Manhattan, in Stuyvesant Town, when she was married and had young children. In retirement, she had homes in the Berkshires, Florida, and later returned to Manhattan, to Peter Cooper Village.
But she lived her middle years in a less familiar location. In 1963, my father got a job upstate, and we moved to Utica. There she taught American History for 30 years in an urban high school, with a student population that was a multiculturalist’s dream. The students varied widely by race, religion, ethnicity, and economic circumstances.
Some of the students came from high achieving families and were easy to teach. But many were from poor homes, broken homes, homes without books, homes without aspirations. She couldn’t imagine a better place to work, an idealization of the national melting pot, right there in her classroom.
Somehow she motivated all of these kids to learn – not by being cool and throwing out the textbooks like Sidney Portier in To Sir With Love – but with her enthusiasm for the story of America, the land of immigrants, founded on a set of high political and moral ideals. She was by no means naïve, but neither was she cynical. She believed America was a special place.
She extended herself to her students outside the classroom as well. I remember Mom once leaving the house to go down to the “lock-up” and get one of her students out of jail. Another time we took in a student from a broken home to live with us. From time-to-time, her students got pregnant and married young. Once when I was about ten years old, she took me as her date to a wedding of one of her students. I remember she never commented on the fact that we were the only white people there. She also didn’t seem to notice how meager the reception was, that all we were served were cookies and fruit punch, ladled out of a garbage can.
A couple of years ago, a Stanford professor was interviewed on PBS about his latest book on teaching history in American high schools. When the interviewer asked him how be became so enthusiastic about his subject, we were surprised to find out – although maybe we should not have been – that the person who inspired him was his high school history teacher, Mrs. Cantor of Utica, New York.
After Mom retired from teaching, she took on a very special project that illustrates much of what my mother was all about. During her teaching years, she noticed that quite a few of her students moved back and forth between Utica and a Florida town named Belle Glade. She discovered that there was a special connection between the two communities. During the 1930s and 40s, migrant laborers would be trucked up to Utica every year from Belle Glade to pick fruits and vegetables “on the season.” But when the truck was ready to drive the laborers back home, many chose to stay behind and make new lives in Utica. Over time, the two communities became linked by family relationships and a common history that had never been told.
My mother got a grant from the Smithsonian to record this history through interviews with farmers, former migrants, and their children. Many of the migrants’ children said they were embarrassed by their history and normally kept it a secret. Mom visited the farms around Utica and collected artifacts – like the buckets used for picking beans, the contracts between the farmers and the foremen (who recruited the workers), and the scrip the migrants often received from the foremen instead of cash payment.
Down in Florida, Mom found that many of the migrant’s children still lived in shacks, on tobacco row. One of Mom’s biggest supporters, however, was a migrant’s daughter who had risen out of poverty – and became the mayor of Belle Glade.
This work led to an archival exhibit of artifacts and oral histories that today rotates between the historical museums of Utica and Belle Glade. I remember the night of the gala that marked the opening of the exhibit in Utica. Mom had worked her magic, bringing together rich and poor, and black and white. And, more than a few people approached her that night and said, “Thank you. Before, I had been ashamed, and now I am proud.”
I want to close with a short story about my mother that I just learned on Friday. In 1949, while my mother was attending Duke University, a girl named Uta came to campus on an exchange program from Germany. Uta was 19 at the time, and was 15 when the war ended. She had been a member of the Hitler Youth, and her older sister had been a member of the Nazi party.
When Uta learned that she would be living in the same dorm as Mom and that Mom was Jewish, she made quite a scene. She refused to occupy a room in the same building as a Jew, even if on a different floor. She demanded that my mother get a room elsewhere. But the dorm advisor told Uta that she either had to make the best of it, or return to Germany. So Uta stayed put. Incredibly, Mom chose to befriend this girl. And, within a few months, Mom invited Uta to visit her family in New York, where Uta slept and ate in a Jewish home.
============
My mother refused to accept that anyone was irredeemable. She thought there was good in everyone –and she usually found it.
=======
Lois and Tom Schwab
February 5, 2007
We were introduced to Elaine in 1985, after our son, David, had started dating Carla, Elaine’s daughter, and it looked very much like they would be married, as indeed they were, in late 1985. Since then we have frequently visited with Elaine and Hal, either at our home or at their New York City apartment, their home in the Berkshires or their home in Fort Myers, FL. We were not surprised at the turnout at Elaine’s funeral service, nor at the warmth or the strength of attachment and love that characterized the remarks delivered at that service. We have always known, and marveled at, Elaine’s accomplishments in her profession of teaching history and at her incredible ability to attract and retain close friends. When Elaine and Hal decided to spend time during the winters in Fort Myers, it was not long before a growing number of their friends decided to do likewise. Elaine was like a torch that attracted people and brought them into the warmth of her orbit. This is not to minimize Hal’s qualities and accomplishments that also help account for their large personal following. But Elaine seemed to be the principal force that led so many to want to be near and close to them both.
Finally, a word should be said about the incredible care given to Elaine during those last months by so many, but principally by Hal, Richard and Carla. She deserved no less, and we know that what they did was truly a labor of love.
Barbara Zucker
February 5, 2007
Barbara Zucker, a friend of Elaine’s for 60 years, delivered the following eulogy at Elaine’s funeral.
I wanted to speak about Elaine as a friend. I’m sure that many who will follow me will mention her more public life – the teaching and museum work, but I knew her primarily as a friend. Of course, compared with Skitzie and Lila, I am a relatively new friend of Elaine’s. We met when she took a temporary job – between college and grad school - at the insurance company where I was working. And that was well over 50 years ago.
One meets lots of people at work, and it is often a short-term connection, but we bonded, and the friendship flourished. And when we married that was the beginning of a remarkably close relationship among the four of us. We were married around the same time, and our children are close in age. When the Cantors moved to Utica, we began a tradition of driving up there for Thanksgiving week-end, and our children could recite the rituals that came to be associated with that holiday – the food, the hockey games of the Clinton Comets, the girls day out together on Black Friday, donuts for the car ride home.
We often vacationed together, up and down the Eastern seaboard from Cape Cod to Saint Simon’s Island to Sanibel. We usually took advantage of the different locations to check out the real estate possibilities (one of Elaine’s main passions), and we seriously considered buying a joint vacation home – in the Berkshires or Sanibel.
Evan though Elaine devoted much time to her own career, she generously responded whenever family or friends could use help. She was actively involved when Hal developed a unique model for theatre courses. I often took advantage of her expertise as a copy editor. I would call from my office in New York to check on usage. This week one of my sons had a similar question, and I realized I had no Elaine to turn to. I’m afraid there will be many such moments in the future.
Although we had a great many connections with Elaine and Hal, it may not be accurate to say that we were exceptionally close because Elaine made a good and close friend of virtually everyone she came in contact with. If she was your friend, your joys were her joys, your worries were her worries. Elaine liked people, she was an easy and welcoming hostess and nothing was too difficult for her to help out with if you had a problem.
Consequently Elaine had an enormous circle of friends. I realized that once again in the Berkshires. My husband and I had bought a house there in 1987. Some years later Elaine and Hal also bought there and within six months, they seemed to know everyone, way more people than we did, and many of them quite fascinating.
Perhaps there should be a special name for us, Friends of Elaine. During the Clinton Presidency, Friends of Bill became known as FOB’s. We can’t use a similar acronym – FOE gives quite the wrong impression. But it was an honored grouping and all of us Friends of Elaine will miss her mightily.
Sue Adams Nye
January 30, 2007
I met Elaine 38 years ago when Carla and I became friends. We were on the cusp of adolesence and I really needed an adult friend. Elaine taught me so much about life and gave me a sense of peace. As a WASP, more interested in Math and Science, I learned from Elaine (and the other Cantors) the acceptance of other cultures, the joy of reading and attending plays, and taking pride in one's intelligence. I will always remember Elaine as one who accepted me as a second daughter and with whom we could discuss everything.
My sincere sympathy goes out to her family, Hal, Carla, and Richard
Elaine Cantor on her 75th Birthday
January 29, 2007
Mia White
January 28, 2007
Dear Harold,Richard and Carla,
I knew you and your beloved Elaine
from Utica, NY. Elaine was one of my High School teachers back in 1964-65. I used to baby sit for
you, Richard and Carla. Hal, I
had an English class with you at MVCC. Elaine pushed her baby carriage with my cousin Sophie Ordman when you lived in Stuyvesant
Town in NYC. She was a wonderful
teacher, and an inspirational
individual. A nurturing woman.
I was so sorry to read of Elaine's
passing.
I would very much like to make a donation in her memory. Please
e-mail me at the address below.
We have been living in Florida
for the past seven years, but do come to NY (Long Island) in the
warmer months. My address here
is 16921 Rose Apple Drive
Delray Beach, Fl 33445
Ph# 561-498-9459.
My sincerest sympathies on your loss.
Mia Miller White
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