New Jersey: What's It To Me?

When I was a child in Ohio many years ago, I had one puzzle—a map of the United States. I loved it and put it together over the years dozens of times. The only piece I lost was the State of New Jersey. I didn’t cry over it because I thought I’d never see New Jersey anyway.

    Meanwhile, in the State of Florida, in the town of Crescent City, fate was preparing to change that. The town had one Jewish couple named Kushner, who owned the dry goods store. A teenager named Cliff Hunter had a part-time job with them until he went away to college. It was the Depression, and his parents could not send him back for a second year, which was a shame because Cliff was a talented kid. The Kushners called their three nephews in Hudson County, New Jersey, and arranged that they would make a job for Cliff and find him a place to live. He could continue his studies in sculpture and painting at the Y on 92nd Street in New York City. For now, he was a house painter.

    Then came Pearl Harbor. Cliff was drafted into the Army, stationed in North Carolina, met and married me, transferred to the Army Air Corps, learned to fly in California, and in due course, went overseas. I went to New York to await his return, intending to study, but first I wanted to meet the fabulous Kushner family. We loved each other at first sight. They found a room for me next door, and I moved from Central Park West to West New York two days later. We remained dear friends until they died, the second of them only this past year.

    What’s New Jersey to me? My home.

Do all the good you can.