Dorothy's life: Tragedies galore, but a role model for survival in facing adversity
The day my mother, Dorothy Garson, died in 2010, the youngest of her four grandchildren, our daughter, Megan, posted on Facebook: “Dorothy Garson, my grandmother. Nothing about her was usual.”
It was a loving and accurate account of Dorothy’s life.
I wrote recently about two of the tragedies of her life, the deaths of the two infants she birthed seven years apart, both victims of congenital hydrocephalus. It was a column that evoked sadness for many readers.
Fair enough. It was a sad story. But there was so much more to her life . . .
This is the rest of Dorothy’s Story
Her life was filled with personal tragedies that would have destroyed others. There was enough depression and despair – in her childhood as well as in her adult life – to leave most people emotionally crippled, perhaps unable to function.
Not Dorothy. She was to become a role model for survival in the face of adversity. Somehow, she rose above everything life threw in her path. She had a large and diverse assortment of friends – more than even her closest family members knew. She took on countless responsibilities in the organizations and institutions that mattered to her. Despite a very modest income, she found a way to contribute at least a bit of money to many organizations that fought to make life better for the oppressed or the unfortunate.
In the end, she had everything that mattered: Something to do. Someone to love. Something to believe in.
Still, she did not like to talk about any of this. She was an unassuming and private person. I told a small fraction of her story at her funeral service in Columbus, Ohio. One of her closest friends approached me afterward: “I thought I knew your mother pretty well,” she said. “I didn’t know anything.”
Dorothy’s final years were busy. Through the decade of her 80s, when many people begin to slow down, Dorothy did not. She bowled twice a week, played mahjong once a week, talked on the telephone to her friends daily, continued to drive her car and provide transportation for her friends, kept the books for her synagogue gift shop, and traveled alone by air to visit her family.
Her final illness, near her 90th birthday, put her in the hospital and a skilled nursing home for the last six weeks of her life. I was with her one afternoon at roughly the midpoint of her stay. Her blood pressure was falling, and she was not responsive. I was convinced she was dying, and the staff concurred. I called a rabbi, thinking it was time to deliver the prayer for the dying.
He arrived, went to her bedside, bent down so that his face was close to hers and began speaking in a booming voice. She blinked, then opened her eyes wide. She stared directly into the rabbi’s eyes and came to attention. She had not been expected to survive that day.
It was so typical of my mother. Just when things seemed impossibly bleak, as they did repeatedly throughout her life, she rallied. She had the ability to summon her inner strength at difficult moments as needed. It was almost like flipping a switch.
That day, she decided to show us that even near the end of life, she still could do it. Her internal resilience, the ability to overcome crisis, was still intact.
It was no surprise. She had been perfecting that skill her entire life.
The tragedies in Dorothy’s life began before she was born
Her father, Leib Cinman, was conscripted into the Red Army in 1918, fighting for the Russian government against anarchists and malcontents. He married his first cousin, Chaia Getmansky either shortly before or shortly after being drafted.
He was 25 years old when he was killed in action. Chaia was 20, a widow, several months pregnant with her first child, and living with her mother, Bryna Getmansky. Dina Cinman was born on December 25, 1920.
All five of Chaia’s siblings already had left for America. One of them, in Omaha, wanted to bring Bryna to America. Her husband saved the money and cut through the red tape on two continents. But when Bryna got the letter telling her that she could come to America, she said, “No. Not until Chaia and Dina can come, too.”
Several months later, the three women – two widows and a child of 2 – traveled to Liverpool, England with multi-week stopovers in Latvia and France along the way. They boarded the S.S. Caronia on October 6, 1923, and arrived at Ellis Island in New York seven days later.
Dina Cinman became Dorothy Silman upon arrival in America. Her mother, Chaia, became Clara Silman.
It was a time of prosperity in America, but this group of three women were without resources or the means to earn a living. There was no welfare system in place yet.
And so, during their first few years of residency in America, Clara and Dorothy were passed around from family to family, city to city, several times a year. They lived with various relatives in Omaha, Rock Island, Illinois, Des Moines, Iowa, and Chicago. For a young child, it required meeting new people, moving into a new residence, and adjusting to new routines every few months.
By 1925, Clara had found work as a finisher at a clothing manufacturing company in Omaha. A year or so later, she found a new husband in Omaha, a widower who had two teenage children and was financially comfortable. Maybe there is a path after all for Dorothy to have a conventional family life in America.
In 1929, when Dorothy was 8, her grandmother, who had become a second mother figure to Dorothy as Clara entered the workforce, died at age 74.
In 1935, seven years after Dorothy’s mother had remarried in Omaha, Dorothy’s stepfather adopted her. Dorothy, 14, took her third name: Dorothy Katzman.
Then, in 1941, Dorothy’s mother, Clara, died of heart failure at age 41. Her mother’s illness also cut short Dorothy’s college education. She was in her first year at the University of Omaha but missed so many classes and fell so far behind when her mother got ill that she dropped out of college. At 21, she entered the workforce in Omaha, a clerical job at an insurance agency.
Dorothy still was struggling with the loss of her mother when her stepfather remarried, thus reshaping Dorothy’s family structure once again. Among other things, she now had three adult stepsiblings.
Then, six weeks later, after meeting her new family, the eldest of her newly acquired stepsiblings died suddenly of a cerebral aneurysm at age 28. Her name was Celia Garson, and, yes, that would be my birth mother. I was nine months old. Celia’s widowed mother had become the third wife of Dorothy’s adoptive father.
During the subsequent months, my father in Lincoln, Nebraska, Sam Garson, would take me to Omaha to visit my grandmother, who was also Dorothy’s new stepmother. Through those trips, Sam became acquainted with the young woman living in the household, Dorothy Katzman.
Sam and Dorothy were seven years apart in age and Sam had an infant son, but romance bloomed quickly. Soon they were engaged to be married.
Dorothy was happy. Then, her closest friend/family member in America, a cousin about her age in Chicago, wrote Dorothy a letter. Reading between the lines, it said that Dorothy’s biological family in America did not think she should marry Sam. The letter referenced family attempts to persuade Dorothy not to marry Sam. The language was disrespectful, and Dorothy was hurt. The letter was found among her things after Dorothy’s death. She had saved it in its original envelope for 35 years!
Dorothy did marry Sam. She became my mother in July 1943. She also took her fourth new name in 22 years: Dorothy K. Garson. And, as those of you who read my previous column, The Story of the Sister and Brother I Never Knew: The Horrors of Hydrocephalus, know, her two attempts to bear children herself were disastrous. (Link to that column at the bottom of this story for those who missed it.
But even before those pregnancies, there were difficult times for Dorothy in her marriage to Sam. Sam’s widowed mother had stepped in to be my caregiver after Celia died. My grandmother was a loving – and forceful – woman. She did not want to give up her role in the household as my caregiver. She clashed repeatedly with Dorothy and finally decided to solve the problem herself. She found a new husband in Omaha.
Dorothy still had the problem of making new friends in a close-knit Jewish community in Lincoln. The wife of one of Sam’s friends told her that if she wanted to become accepted, she needed to learn to play mahjong. She set out to make that happen. Wow, did she make it happen! She became an expert and later taught mahjong at a seniors’ residential facility.
Her close friends and fellow mahjong mavens told me after Dorothy’s death that she was an unusual player. She could rearrange her tiles to make good hands that few other people could see.
Dorothy was a widow living in Columbus, Ohio when her adoptive father in Omaha was about to celebrate his 100th birthday. Dorothy wrote to one of his grandchildren in Omaha. She asked to be a co-sponsor of whatever kind of event they might be planning. She got a letter back saying all the arrangements already had been made. “Perhaps there is something else you could do in honor of the occasion.” In other words: Get lost.
A few months later, Dorothy’s adoptive father died. His will did not mention Dorothy at all. She was shut out and hurt. It was not about money, however. There were a few household items she really wanted – especially some things her own mother, Clara, had brought into her 14-year marriage with Dorothy’s adoptive father.
I called a family member who was involved in handling the estate. I was told an estate sale was being planned. I told her what the items were and offered to pay for them myself at whatever prices they might think appropriate. The woman said she wanted to talk to her older brother. That older brother rejected my offer and refused to provide a path for me to obtain anything from the estate. “If my grandfather had wanted Dorothy to have these items he would have made arrangements for that in his will,” he said, approximately.
Dorothy wrote a letter to those in the family who handled the estate.
One of the lines: “I have been hurt so many times in my lifetime that I guess this is one more thing I will just have to endure and overcome. Guess another chapter of my life is over with.”
The hurt never left Dorothy’s heart.
Years later, when I was talking with her about this situation, she recalled her joy in being adopted and gaining a father in 1934.
Her final comment on the subject: “I only wish he had meant it.”
Looking back at Dorothy’s life
After Dorothy died in 2010, the bowling league in Columbus, Ohio, of which she had been president, was renamed: Dorothy Garson Hadassah Bowling League. A bit earlier, when she retired as treasurer of the gift shop at her synagogue in Columbus after 35 years, they had to find two people to replace her.
When she was honored for her lengthy service to the gift shop, she told the story about how she got the job: “When I came to Columbus, I wanted to become involved, so I first was on a Sisterhood calling committee, and then the flower fund. At one of the Sisterhood board meetings, I volunteered to be gift shop treasurer and the rest is history.”
It was a classic Dorothy story. Of course, she volunteered. Of course, she was willing to start with a menial job. Of course, she continued volunteering for jobs with increased responsibilities. Of course, she stayed in the job forever. And, of course, the people she worked with ended up in awe of her.
Dorothy was no more than 5 feet tall in her youth and a couple of inches shorter in her later years. She was not a forceful personality and did not project an image of control. She was soft-spoken, humble, always polite, and never used strong language. She simply won over the people around her with love, compassion, and respect. She made everyone feel special. She learned to use these tools early in life, and they became part of who she was.
It is an age-old technique that goes back to ancient proverbs in many cultures. It is described in the proverbs of China and Malaysia and even Russia. It has been the foundation of multiple religions, including Christianity and Judaism. It has been preached repeatedly by great thinkers and leaders over the centuries – the Dalai Lamas, Confucius, St. Vincent de Paul.
For Dorothy, love and compassion were lessons she learned at a very young age – from her mother, her Grandmother Bryna, from the family members who brought her to America and provided for her. They were among the tools she used to survive the many trials and tests of her lifetime. They gave her comfort and almost always returned dividends in some way.
The idea of caring for and about the lives of others was at the core of her being, and it did not matter whether she got anything tangible in return. It was, simply, the right thing to do. It also enabled her to cope with the hopelessly losing hands she would be dealt repeatedly during her lifetime.
Or, maybe those losing hands were not really so hopeless at all. Maybe she just needed to rearrange things and look at them a different way.
She was, after all, an expert at that.
Adapted from Dorothy’s Story by Arnold Garson, 2016
Thank you for the kind words.
Thank you, Susan.