A Christmas Story of Us: Jack and Shirl

[copied from dland]

Christmas, 2002 will be the first day in almost 60 years that my father will not be celebrating – or at least, taking note of – his wedding anniversary. Jack and Shirl were married on Christmas Day, 1943, and Shirl died in May, just four days before Jack’s 83rd birthday. And so, for them, a Christmas “Story of Us.”

They didn’t meet on a Christmas, but close. In 1941, Jack, a college graduate since the previous June and unable to get the job this should have gotten him because of a low draft number, was coming to New York for the New Year’s weekend for a fraternity convention. He would be with all of his friends again, and all their girlfriends, his included, and they would have a great weekend in a hotel in New York City. There was only one problem: his girlfriend’s mother thought this sounded as fishy as it sounds now to you and me, and said she couldn’t go. So here’s Jack, a really good-looking, smart, nice-Jewish-boy college graduate with no date for the fraternity weekend. What to do?

His sister suggested that he write a letter to a cousin who lived in New York, about their own age, whom he had never met, and ask her if she could fix him up with a date for the weekend. No dummy, this pretty and popular girl seizes a golden opportunity and tells her plainer cousin from the other side of the family that she’s got to go. This guy is great. (Remember, she’s never met him.) So Shirl decides to go, and her mother is easily convinced since she’s actually met Jack’s parents in years past, in fact, before Jack and Shirl were ever born, since Jack’s father’s first cousin is Shirley’s mother’s sister-in-law. (Got that? Here, it’s easier like this: Edith had a first cousin on her father’s side named Shirl and a second cousin on her mother’s side named Jack. When we draw a family tree, it only works if we roll it into a tube, since both sides meet at Edith.)

I digress. Edith takes Shirl shopping at Klein’s, where they pick out a fabulous weekend wardrobe that probably cost a total of $10.00. And Shirl gets packed off to the hotel. She told me years later that there was one room for the guys and one room for the girls, but several of the girls were not exactly … behaving. There was certainly drinking, but they were all 21 or over. That very first night, Jack got so drunk that he was sick for hours and hours. This, by the way, is the last time Jack has ever had a drop of alcohol, New Year’s Eve, 1941. It is also the last time he danced.

Weekend over, he went back home to Massachusetts, waited to be drafted (he had already taken his physical on December 8), broke up with his girlfriend, and started writing to Shirl, who started writing back. When he got leave from the Army, he visited. Mostly they wrote. They actually told us only a few years ago that from the time they met to the time they got married, they only saw each other about ten times, although each of those was a weekend.

They got engaged on March 25, 1942. Jack had finished basic training by this time, had been stationed in a variety of places around the country, learning to shoot German planes out of the skies with anti-aircraft artillery, and was still writing, writing. And then, he got stationed in Fort Dix, New Jersey, near Trenton, only a couple of hours by train from New York City.

It was 1943 and Christmas was coming. Jack was an officer, a second lieutenant, and, not surprisingly, the only Jewish guy in his outfit. So when his commanding officer said something about there being no passes for Christmas, except for unusual circumstances, he probably never expected Jack to step up. He asked if he could have a 24 hour pass on Christmas so he could get married. After he got it, he called Shirl and told her that if she could plan a wedding in one week, they could get married before he was shipped overseas.

It was a gamble, sort of. Jack wanted to marry Shirl, but thought it would be better to wait until after the war, so she wouldn’t end up a widow, or married to someone crippled, or worse. She said she would marry him anyway, regardless of injury, so why not marry him before? Whatever happened, she would love him anyway and they would be married. So he gave her one chance, one day, and she ran with it.

She planned a small wedding, in a rabbi’s study (which is to say, a religious ceremony, but not a big fancy one.) There were only about a dozen people at the ceremony, their two families, and then a few dozen went out for lunch afterwards. Jack’s family came down by train.

Here’s the honeymoon: they went out for dinner to some Hungarian restaurant (we have a picture taken by the roving photographer) and then to a hotel. But remember, it was a 24 hour pass. So Jack had to leave at midnight to get the train to get back to Fort Dix on time, I guess by 6 AM. So here’s Shirl, on her honeymoon, alone in the hotel room in the middle of the night. After an hour or so, there’s a knock on the door, and to her amazement, there stands one of her new sisters-in-law, telling her that, since there’s a shortage of hotel rooms in New York, due to the war and the holiday, and she’s knows that Jack’s just left, can she spend the night here? Really. My mother spent more of her honeymoon night with her husband’s sister than she did with her husband.

Jack spent their first anniversary sleeping in the barn in France, surrounded by potatoes, soldiers, and shellfire. He spent the next 56 of them with her.

We didn’t celebrate Christmas as such when I was growing up, no tree or anything, but each year we would go out to dinner, or into the city to see a show. Maybe that’s why I felt Christmas was still a special day, even though it wasn’t really a holiday for us. It was the day we celebrated Shirl and Jack. Since I’ve been married (and for a couple of years before, so now that’s 27 years) I celebrate Christmas with my in-laws, although I would stop by to see Shirl and Jack in the morning to wish them a happy anniversary. Since my in-laws moved a couple of hours away, I haven’t had time to fit in both. Don’t know what I’ll do tomorrow. It may snow hard, eliminating the drive to south Jersey all together. I could spend the day with Jack, if I wanted to.

What will it be for him, Christmas 2002? Does he miss her? Is he glad her suffering is over? Does he wish that his was, too? Will he even stop and notice the day, or mention it to anyone? This is the generation that won the war, remember. They don’t let those pesky emotions get in their way. They just do what they’ve got to do.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Jack is the best, and he is my hero. Let the day be whatever he wants it to be, and let it be easy for him. He’s earned it.

Merry Christmas to all. Happy Anniversary to one.


ENTRY #32