NORM
Norm Berman was a small man with a great heart. Not literally, but in the sense of great vision and great aspirations.
He was born into a poor immigrant family, grew up in the Depression and had hard memories of the deprivation and humiliation, of welfare workers visiting the family and of having to use welfare lunch tickets in the school cafeteria. When he was fifteen, his father died after a prolonged illness, and Norm and his two older sisters had to work to keep the family afloat. Norm worked after school and on Saturdays and Sundays. This was no overwhelming hardship, but it meant that whatever interests and aspirations he had were put on hold.
Norm lived most of his life with a badly damaged heart. He suffered a bout of rheumatic fever as a young child, not uncommon in the pre-penicillin days, and was never a strong or vigorous youngster. I don’t think either Norm or his parents knew exactly how serious his condition was until he actually reported for induction in the army at the beginning of World II and was of course classified as 4F with a leaky aortic valve.
Norm did the next best thing; he went to work in a defense plant, the Fisher Body factory on Coit Road. There he organized the office workers into the UAW, one of the first locals to join the white-collar office workers with the blue-collar assembly line workers. There and in a variety of other jobs, Norm always invested himself totally.
Some years after we were married, Norm and I joined a play-reading group, and Norm’s enthusiasm for performance was reawakened. And when Reuben Silver called and invited him to take a role in a play at Karamu Theater, it was a door opening into a whole new life.
Norm never went to college, he never took a course in acting or theater arts. But he was so eager to learn that he constantly absorbed ideas and techniques and methods from the wonderfully talented actors around him. And he worked with an amazing line up of brilliant directors: Dorothy and Reuben Silver at Karamu, Don Bianchi at Dobama Theater, Lucia Colombi at Ensemble Theater, Mark Feder at Jewish Community Center, Joe Garry at Cleveland State University, Dick Meadows at Cuyahoga Community College, Vincent Dowling at Great Lakes Shakespeare Festival, and many more than I can name here. He built a reputation not only as a talented character actor but also as a totally reliable cast member. When Richard Oberlin asked him to join the Cleveland Play House company, it was a dream fulfilled.
Meanwhile, Norm had felt his heart weakening for some time. When he had to walk up Euclid Avenue on his way to a recording studio, he would stop every few stores and look in the windows, not because he was interested in the merchandise but because he had to catch his breath. No one, not even I, knew how brave my husband was.
Finally, he went to our dear friend and wonderful physician Eddie Stone. Eddie sent him immediately to cardiologist Dale Adler who in turn sent him to Dr. Alan Markwitz, the cardiac surgeon, who told Norm he would perform the surgery as soon as Norm was ready.
Norm had just been cast in a play by Dorothy Silver and asked if itcould wait a month, and Markwitz said, “Yes, a month, but not a year.” Norm came home and told me that he would have the surgery after the run of the play. For an hour I obsessed silently over the possibility that Norm could die during that month. Then he told me that he had changed his mind. He called Dorothy and told her to cast someone else and called Dr. Markwitz and scheduled the surgery for the following Friday. I can tell you that no one has ever gone into major surgery more joyously or more eagerly than Norm did. He had no second thoughts, no doubts, no fears. He had been waiting sixty years for this opportunity and embraced it. Finally he would have a heart strong enough to match his ambitions and his strivings.
Five months after getting his new plastic aortic valve, Norm was diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease. Norm had Parkinson’s for nineteen years, and for most of that time he kept on living and acting. Sometimes he turned down a role because his hands shook so he couldn’t hold the script. Sometimes he couldn’t keep his eyes in focus. On one of his last performances, arranged by his dear friend Don Bianchi, he had to be lifted to the stage. I told Don I thought he would need a mike because his voice had gotten so soft, but when he got on stage, he found that old voice and projected it to the back of the theater. Norm’s life—and mine—was a celebration of obstacles overcome, of triumphs on stage and off, of wonderful camaraderie of the theater, of constant growth and stretching. He—we—loved every minute of it.
MY MOTHER
My mother, Helen Kanner Siegel, was a remarkable woman, but I never knew it until now. She was born in Brooklyn, of Hungarian parents who came from Vienna, but moved to Cleveland as a child. Like many young women of that era, she never finished high school. She left at age sixteen and went to work in the law office of Sam Silbert, who later became a judge. Apparently she was something of a rebel, because she married a gentile, had a child, and promptly divorced her husband when she found that he was cheating on her.
Then Nate Siegel came along and married the pretty young widow with a pretty baby. And that defined the rest of her life. He was fourteen years older than she and many years more worldly, and he both spoiled her and protected her. As far back as I can remember we had a maid. I don’t remember my mother ever doing “housework,” but she did all the cooking for the family, and she was an excellent cook. But she never learned how to manage the money, not even to balance a checkbook.
When my brother was born in 1930, my father bought my mother a car in celebration. In 1930 it was more than unusual for a woman to drive an automobile, but she did. And after my father died, two years later, she drove our family to New York and then to Florida. I wouldn’t attempt that on my own in my best years.
I always thought of her as a conventional Jewish mother, but that’s not really true. She was anxious about her children, and when she was upset she would go to bed with a migraine headache. But she would make a quick adjustment to the reality and be back in business. When my brother Gary broke his collarbone playing basketball at age 13 (he weighed 93 pounds and was the shortest boy in the class), she cried a few tears for him, but then realized that boys were likely to do those things. When he broke it a second time, playing basketball against doctor’s orders, she said, “The first time was an accident; this time you did it on purpose.”
When Edythe married a gentile, my mother cried and took to her bed with a migraine. When I married Norm, a poor boy with no profession, she cried. When Gary married Evelyn, she cried because he was too young. But each time she quickly recovered and accepted her new children-in-law fully, and made them her friends.
When I was 13, my mother remarried. This was her third marriage, remember. Virgil Heimlich was a gentle, soft-spoken bachelor who was never fully accepted by my mother as a replacement for Nathan Siegel. But they lived together and made some kind of life until her death.
Before my father died, he made generous provision for his family. There was a trust fund for each of us children and what I assume should have been enough for mother to keep the family comfortably. But she couldn’t make the adjustment, and our standard of living declined, slowly but steadily. Finally the family income and outgo reached some kind of balance. Mother accepted margarine instead of butter and shoulder lamb chops instead of loin and still cooked wonderfully.
She had trouble accepting my anti-war actions and thought Norm and I were radicals far out of her circle, but as the Korean War continued, she rethought her position and soon asked me whom she could write to to help end the war. After that she regularly sought our advice on whom to vote for. I imagine there were few women of her generation and class who opened their minds to new political ideas.
My mother was a loving, kind woman, decent to everyone, white and black, because it was the right thing to do. She was a peacemaker and acceptor of people and ideas. Behind her facade of middle-class Jewish conventionalism, there lingered the fierce rebel of her youth. I wish I had known her better.
MY SISTER-IN-LAW
Twelve years ago, Norm and I suddenly found that we had no one to spend Thanksgiving with. Our children could not come home, and the circle of friends with whom we had shared all our holidays had died or moved away or were visiting their grown children. We had Thanksgiving eating dinner alone at the Playhouse Club, a good restaurant and a familiar hangout for the actors—but none of them were there. It was the most depressing holiday we ever had.
When I told my brother and his wife about it, my sister-in-law said: “You’ll never spend Thanksgiving alone again!” And we didn’t, until 2005. We have joined heir family for a festive meal for nearly 25 guests.
Everyone contributes, and we eat and drink from hors d’oeuvres to multiple desserts and then start again with sandwiches. It is a wonderful in-gathering of siblings and children and grandchildren, cousins and second cousins (but who’s counting?) full of love and laughter.
In 2005 Gary was very ill, and Evelyn thought it would be best if their immediate family spent it together. My sister-in-law is devoted to my brother, 24/7. Now Gary is in Menorah Park, and I help out by going every evening to feed him, but the big burden is on her. I’ll always love her for her generous sharing with us and her living care for my brother.
MY NUMBER ONE CAT
When my husband and I moved into Stone Gardens assisted living residence, he really did need assistance from various helpers, having suffered from Parkinson's disease for 17 years. Our daughter felt that he needed a reversal of roles into a caregiver. Her solution was to get a pet that needed his help. So Laurie and my grandson shopped at the Animal Protective League Shelter.
In the cat department, one slender, petite gray feline came to the front of the cage and seemed to say, "Take me," and they did. With all the required shots and documents, she came home to Norm and slipped into the empty space on this chair—a perfect fit. They bonded immediately, and Norm named her Silky for her smooth, shiny coat.
Silky was Norm's cat. They cuddled together to watch TV or read. Silky claimed the tray on Norm's walker as her regular vehicle. To everyone else, including perfect strangers, she was cordial—the perfect hostess. She was also calm and cool-headed, never shying from loud noises or running from visitors. She was philosophical when I adopted Fluffy, my number two cat.
Silky was adventurous as well and amused herself by sharpening her technique of slipping out the open door if a delivery man lingered there too long. What was there to see out there in the hall? To the right, doors; to the left, more doors. Silky checked them all out, and if any of them were open, she never hesitated to enter, as if to compare this apartment with her own. Not everyone welcomed their uninvited guest. I left my door unlatched, though not open, and she always found her way back.
We had Silky about 12 years. But yesterday we said our last farewells. She had been losing weight for some time. The vet had found signs of several internal disorders and severe jaundice. Pills had helped some until she figured out how to nibble off the Pill Pocket and leave the pill. Now she was emaciated and slept all day, refusing to eat anything. I didn't want Silky to end her good life in the chill air of a veterinary hospital. I located a mobile vet who makes house calls. She came well prepared and gentle in tone and gesture.
I held Silky on my lap until her heart stopped. She will always be my number one cat.