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Heart to Heart
Best Friends, Here and Gone

San Diego Jewish Times, March 24,, 2006                                                       .

By Gert Thaler

SAN DIEGO, Calif.—Trying my best to console my granddaughter, Shelley Neiman, as we sat over a cup of what used to be hot coffee, I recalled three incidents in my lifetime that have left their indelible marks with me. Try as I may while I spoke in softened tone, the tears welled up in my eyes, some even dribbling into the coffee cup.

When I was 42, she was 39 and we were inseparable friends. Libby Kane left a void in my life that can never be replaced. Nobody I knew had ever experienced “The Big C” (we never would say the word out loud in 1962) and even though I was a mature 42-year-old mother of two, the realization of what was occurring never fully penetrated my brain until the last days of her illness.

Friends from the birth of our same age sons, we shared motherhood happenings, car pooling, supper club, and hers and ours were what we today call “extended family.”

As my granddaughter and I talked that morning nearly two weeks ago from the time readers and I are connecting today, it was March 11, a day inscribed in that memory, since it was Libby Kane’s birthday.

Finally in 1970 I was blessed with a new “best friend,” something I had missed for the previous eight years. Anyone who was, and is, familiar with Israeli domestic life recognizes the leading travel wholesaler name “Kopel Tours,” not just because they were among the leaders in their profession but even more so because Kopel Rosenberg, its president, was a national hero. As a taxi driver in 1947 he was the first and for a while, the only car making the run from Lod (now Ben Gurion) Airport into Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. It was Kopel who envisioned slicing a sedan in half and adding extra seats before resealing what would become the first stretched out cars in the country.

Business smarts found him heading a company that had offices throughout the country and thus, I first met Kopel in a hotel lobby on the infamous eve of Passover, 1970. As a travel agent I was the victim of an oversold hotel, which had left me with four rooms for 16 San Diegans. As I pounded a desk and with tears staining my face, Kopel came to my aid and coaxed my group into sharing what little space remained, assuring me that by the next night everyone would be comfortably accommodated. And by magic, which I still call “Kopel Magic,” it worked.

The next day in a visit to the Kopel Tours Tel Aviv office I met Adina Rosenberg Pilovsky (Mrs. Shmuel Pilovsky), the Great Man’s daughter, in charge of hotels for the company, and our personalities clicked. We were off and running and remained inseparable best friends for the next seven years. It would be 1977 before that friendship was cut short by Adina’s untimely death at 39 years of age as a patient in Tel Aviv’s Ichilov Hospital, the very hospital where I recently spent five weeks as a patient with Adina’s two daughters at my bedside in daily visits. And the memories of so many wonderful times together in Israel when they were small children were laughed (and cried) about. Today Adina’s son, Eran and his wife, Anat, live in Palo Alto, deeply involved in Jewish community life and as leaders of their local Federation.

 It was Adina who phoned me on Yom Kippur, 1973, to report that the country was again under siege. It was Jan. 28, 1977, when I phoned her to say “happy birthday” (in those days it cost $15 to place a person-to-person call) only to have to repeat the call the next night to report the birth of my first grandson.

 In 1978 I was no longer able to phone her and again I experienced great loss.

I searched for a replacement among my good friends and decided that Tibby Podell, one of the most popular Jewish women in town would live up
to all the expectations I had for a “best” friend. And I hit the jackpot!

Only if one of us were out of town, or had a bad cold, did Tibby and I ever miss a Saturday afternoon lunch. It was our routine for me to pick her up and spring a surprise location for the usual three-hour get together. Mac Podell would always look forward to our return and a recounting of where we had gone and what we had consumed. We had also formed a birthday club with Gladys Block, whose 55-year friendship I still cherish, and the late Sonny Weinman, which was dominated by only one rule. “No matter what the condition, the gift wrappings remained the same over the years, tattered and torn, weary and undazzling, with a mind-boggling gift hidden beneath that would set off four Jewish women into gales of laughter.

Dec. 6 stays firmly with me not just because it was Tibby’s birthday (and once in a while I remember to call her daughter, Enid Gleich, to let her know I still remember) but also because I think of the late Jeannette Wax, because it was also her natal day.

So I recounted these tales to my granddaughter two weeks ago as I tried my best to console her. Only a few days before, her best friend, Ashlyn had been found beside the San Francisco Presidio jogging path, the victim of a hit and run driver.

Hopelessly wounded Ashlyn never regained consciousness, and instead of attending a gala birthday celebration by all their close friends, a vigil had commenced in support of Ashlyn’s grieving family. There were little words I could muster to ease the pain felt among the gathering of dozens of USC college and high school classmates.

Just a week ago memorial services were held at the high school in Manhattan Beach where bleachers were filled with mourners, among them my granddaughter.

 “We had planned so many things we would do as we shared our lives. We would even try to coincide the birth of any children we might have because our ideas and ideals were so much in tune.” But Ashlyn will not be celebrating her 28^th birthday next year as she leaves the sweetest of memories in the hearts of her family, countless friends and business associates.

And especially in the memory of her best friend.