This site is dedicated to the memory of my parents, Yale (Yeichel ben Yehuda Avigdor) and Bea (Bayta bas Yeor Mordichi) Gordon.

I thank them for all they did in starting me out on the path of life. They prized and fostered both education and curiosity in my brothers and me, encouraging and supporting us to be all we could be.

My parents were married on a weekend pass during World War II. Dad was enlisted in the Navy but had been accepted into Tufts Medical School when he was reassigned to a Seabee unit headed to the South Pacific. While waiting to ship out, he received a telegram telling him to report for medical school. The Seabee unit that he was assigned to did not come back after the war.

After completing medical school and an internship at McCook Hospital in Hartford, CT, he opened a practice in Hartford. In January of 1952, he was drafted into the Army and served eight months with a MASH unit in Korea before the State Department realized he had served in one war already.

He practiced medicine in Hartford for 35 years and helped found and staff the family practice department at the University of Connecticut. Throughout his career he earned numerous awards from the Connecticut Medical Society for his abilities as a doctor and involvement in the Connecticut medical community.

Mom raised a family and was a full time Mom with a capital M. As we grew, Mom went back to school, earning a masters in school psychology. She practiced in the Hartford school system for 20 years, earning respect and numerous awards from her colleagues. Along the way she acquired a second masters degree.

After retiring, Mom and Dad spent the next 23 years as a unit: traveling, learning, collecting, and doing chesed (charity), and watching their family grow. They poured their love and generosity on their grandchildren and community.

My parents passed away within 10 months of each other. After celebrating their 63rd wedding anniversary together, my father passed. And on their 64th wedding anniversary, and we laid my mother to rest next to him. In their 64 years of marriage, they never missed an anniversary together.

*****

I’d also like to dedicate this site to Eunice Brill, the niece of my grandmother, Mollie Meltzer. I had never met her, but she invited me to a dinner and dedication at the Holocaust Center in Skokie. I was in mourning and could not attend, but my 22-year-old twin daughters spent the better part of a day with her. Seventy years evaporated, and Mrs. Brill was all my daughters talked about for several days.