I will add a little about my Dad and Mom
Nehemia ben reb chaim ha Cohen was born in Newatk NJ on July 20 1907. How he was given the last name Leveen when registered at the courthouse in NJ we do not know. What we do now is Reb Chaim left my Dad my two Aunts and my grandmother and disappeared for Chicago where he died. At seven my Dad moved to Joburg with his mom and three sisters because there was a rich cousin who told them to come. The rich cousin must have been Bernie Madoff?s uncle because it was pure BS. My Dad and his family lived in utter poverty in fererra town and at age 13 he went to work as a grocery boy carrying sack of sugar for Mr Leibowitz. At twenty he started to work for Feldmans the food wholesaler. he worked his way up as a buyer and then as a salesman. He married for the first time in 1933 to a waman of French Jewish decent named Sophie. Sophie was the sister of the chief Rabbi of Rhodesia. My day took his wife to the NY world?s fair in 1939 on a buying trip for Feldman?s and travelled on the Queen Mary. War broke out while he was on the trip. He divorced from Sophie in 1942 and tried to inlist in the S African army but was asked to renounce his US citizenship. He refused to do this and never was allowed to inlist although my Uncle Natie served with distinction in North Africa under Montgomery. Dad met mon who was a young sevretary at Feldmans in 1943. She had come from Stelenbosch to the big city. She also was in a frail state as her high school boy firend and intended husband was killed in action in Italy. My Dad and Mom married in 1944 and moved to thye farm in Stellenbosch. My moms mom wanted nothing to do with a dad but he won her over by working on the farm. My sister Ethel was born just before the end of the war in Stellenbosch.
My Dad had a childhood friend who also grew up in poverty as a neighbor of his. This friend was Issy Cramer perhaps related to Philip and after whose familiy Cramerville is named. Issy worked at Government Garage and was disposing of war surplus vehicles. My Dad opened the Motor Breakdown Company at 28 Sauer Street Johannesburg in September 1945 and had this business until 1967. It scrapped cars and sold them for parts. My dad bought the land at 28 Sauer Street for a song in 1947 as the land had been undermined by the first mine in Joburg in the late 1880s. Cars would fall into sinkholes form the mine shaft that was only 50 feet below the ground. The whole family of uncles and aunts used to tease my Dad he bought the worst property in Joburg. But there is a very silver lining. In 1966 my dad heard from a friend in the planning department of the city of joburg that Standard bank was buying up all the property on the entire block that ran from Sauer to Frederick street. Guess what my Dad played hardball and held out until the bitter end as Standard Bank did not want their HQ to have a scrapyard right in the middle of the building. My Dad and Mom retired and lived well into thier 80s from the proceeds of this land sale. In 1970 they travelled to Europe and the US and were on the first voyage of the QE 2. My Dad returned to big apple 31 years after the queen mary voyage.
My Mom was born in 1920 on November 17th in Stellenbosch and lived a much easier childhood as her folks made good money off of the farm and vinyard. She graduated at age 16 from Rennish High School For Girls and her mother instructed her to find a husband. She did not attend university as she was a girl but she had great smarts and her brain could easily have handled university. In her late life just around the death of my father who was 13 years older than her my mom suffered from depression that took her in and out of shock therapy. The death of my Dad and my sister and I being far away in America was just too much for her to handle as well as the fact that she had two hip replacements. She also spent her last years trying to make sure my brother Hilton was taken care of. In another episode I will discuss how Hilton, my Dad and Mom came to live with me for a while in Philly and then in San Fran.
I loved my Mom and my Dad and miss them like crazy. I am crying like a baby as I write this. From 1975 to 1998 I made dozens of trips back to S Africa to visit them in Cyrildene and then in the Courtleigh Hotel in Berea and the Aged home. May their souls rest in peace. May God bless them. They went hrough more hardship than I can imagine and they made me into what I am. My dad died of prostate cancer becuase he let it go on for too long. That is why I could handle the surgery without fear. My best friend Sam James was my dad?s doc at Joburg Gen almost to the bitter end. Sam and family immigrated to the USA at my insistance the year before my Dad died. I tell you Sam added five years to my Dad?s life by taking excellent care of him and my Mom. At fifteen I gained my half brother but at six I gained more than anything I could imagine from a guy. I gained the friendship of one Sam Henri James the son of Egyptian Jewish refugees who left Egypt like Moses with nothing but the clothes on their back.
God bless you all for reading this