ANOTHER 100TH BIRTHDAY PARTY
Here’s my latest essay from the Cleveland Plain Dealer . . .
Dick Van Dyke turned 100 on Saturday. That’s no big deal — in my world. Last month my klezmer band played a 100th birthday party — our fourth in three years. There was a chair placed prominently in the middle of the dance floor, to lift the birthday “girl” for “Hava Nagila.”
I said to myself, “No way.”
Correct: No way. We did not lift the celebrant on a chair. But the birthday “girl,” Etty Hoffman of Beachwood, did dance. She was out there on the dance floor. She boogied. And she gave a moving speech afterward, touching on more than five generations of her family, including “mommy and daddy.”
Nearly 10,000 Americans turn 100 each year, according to the Pew Research Center. The United States has the second-most number of centenarians in the world. Japan is first.
After the hora, I asked a dancer — Ms. Hoffman’s niece Joyce — if she was going to live forever. “What do you mean?” Joyce said. “Me or my aunt?”
“You. Do you assume you’re going to make it 100, too?”
“I’m planning on it!” she said. Joyce is in her 70s and plays flute, does yoga, lifts weights, walks a lot, and is skinny. Bonus: Joyce’s mom is 103. She’s Etty’s older sister. (Joyce’s mother was at the party, too.)
My dad made it to 68. Shvak. (Yiddish for weak). My mom died at 83. Better. A year before my father died, I interviewed him; I said, “You don’t talk much about your mother. Do you ever think about your mother?” I annoyed my dad. He said, “Of course I think about my mother!” My dad’s mother had single-handedly run the family’s candy store on Kinsman Road at East 151st Street. My dad’s father had been hit by a May Company truck in 1924 and spent most of his time hanging out at the pool hall after the accident.
At Julia Stratton’s gravesite in 2020, on the 100th anniversary of her birth. (Julia Stratton, 1920-2004.) From left: Lucy, Bert, Jack, Ted Stratton
At Ms. Hoffman’s birthday party, my band played: “My Girl” by the Temptations; “I’ve Just Seen a Face” by the Beatles; Tin Pan Alley classics; klezmer instrumentals; and some Yiddish songs. The partygoers applauded our wide-ranging set list. At a 100th birthday party, everybody is 100% mellow. A 100th birthday party is not a wedding — no anxious bride. It is not a bar mitzvah — no sullen 13-year-olds. There is no kvetching, period.
In the 1920s, Ohio-born vaudeville clarinetist Ted Lewis popularized the phrase, “Is everybody happy?” And yes, everybody was happy at Ms. Hoffman’s party. She was born in 1925 and grew up in the Glenville neighborhood and attended synagogue at the Cleveland Jewish Center (now Cory United Methodist Church) on East 105th Street. Etty was in the temple’s Confirmation class of 1941.
Her 100th birthday celebration was at Park Synagogue in Pepper Pike. Park Synagogue is a direct outgrowth of the Cleveland Jewish Center. Same congregation, different building. Ms. Hoffman has been a member of Park Synagogue since 1930. I wonder how many relatives at Ms. Hoffman’s party think they’ve inherited the family’s longevity gene.
They’ll find out.
Mary Tyler Moore died at 80. Keep that in mind.
And happy birthday to Dick Van Dyke, Etty Hoffman, and everybody trying to emulate them.
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Link to Plain Dealer article here.
5 comments
I think that there is a Jewish blessing (sorta) — or at least it is considered a nice thing to say — “May you live to 120.” Is that right? Does the saying have a Torah or similar sacred origin? Bert, please weigh in on this.
To save Bert the five minutes it might take to look it up, the phrase stems from the mention in the Jewish Bible of Moses’ living to that age. Some interpret it as “May you be alive at 120.” I personally like that translation better.
Bert – another case of “double dipping,” though at least you acknowledge it. Do you get paid double – by both Peedee and Yiddishe Cup?
I’m happy, yet old enough to know who Ted Lewis is/was. Nice work. We’re (over)due for lunch.
Ted Lewis (born Theodore Friedman) was a clarinetist and vaudevillian from Circleville, Ohio. He was a better vaudevillian than clarinet player, according to guitarist Eddie Condon, who supposedly said, “Ted Lewis made the clarinet talk, and it usually said, ‘Please put me back in the case.” [Anecdote courtesy of Henry Sapoznik]
My three siblings and I drove to Augusta in August for my aunt’s 100th. She is my mom’s older sister. As you said, everyone was chill, even family members (not from our branch) who had barely spoken to each other in decades. Aunt Jean enjoyed the music (an Elvis imitator) and the attention, though she had trouble remembering who I was. I reminded her that I had gone to see her and Uncle Bud when they were living on Staten Island in the early ’50s. I told her I remembered the trip for the ferry ride — my first — and their car which was purple and had a round grill. “Was it a Hudson?” I asked. “Why no,” she said, surprised that I’d gotten something so basic wrong. “It was a Studebaker.” That was cool, but I hope that, if I make it as far as she has, I’m more like Dick Van Dyke, who says he still enjoys dancing the old soft shoe with his 46-years-younger wife. Why not try?
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