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Otto and Alberta is in interesting story. Some parts happy, some parts sad, all of it is touching. My mothers parents were Ralph and Beatrice they were married and Ralph did well for himself.  They owned a large home with servants in West New York, NJ  If you are familiar with that area you get just how affluent they were.  When my mother was eight Her father came home not feeling well and he went to the doctor who diagnosed him with consumption.  A sickness that we will later come to know as Tuberculosis.  He died soon after in a sanitarium and my Grandmother was left with nothing but the house and two kids to raise. She liquidated her assets and moved to a town farther west called Ridgefield Park, NJ settling on a street called Euclid Ave.

Otto Seidewitz  was a poor immigrant from Germany who did not care for the way things were going there.  He saw Hitler for what he was in the very beginnings of coming to power I guess he had a sixth sense about things and decided he would be better off in a country that did not have a problem with Jewish sounding names.  He was a Christian but did not want to take that chance. So he moved throughout Europe and finally settled on the Dalmatian Coast of what what then Yugoslavia.  Here too the nervousness of what was being talked about in nearby Germany frightened him and wanted out. This was the mid to late 1920s and the only thing that kept him in Europe was the love of his life Alberta.  They has lived next door to each other in Yugoslavia, buy she was from Austria.  They talked all the time and walked  hand in hand to his work and her school each day .  He defended her in fights and even did not care if he got cooties when he kissed her.  Her love for him made her take a chance on his dream.  If Otto was going to the US she would too.  They saved enough money to come through Ellis Island together and they went to live with separate relatives until they could get married.

Otto was a good German, and as such loved his beer.  This was the time of prohibition and consumption of alcohol was not permitted.  Alberta finished her education and became a teacher teaching life studies Home Economics and Ethics at NJ state teachers college.  As a woman steeped in ethics and the laws of her new home, she could not abide by Otto breaking the laws by partaking in the speakeasies, and Inevitably they broke up.  Otto one day is picking up some extra money doing lawn mowing when he meets a young widow with two children.  He becomes friendly with her and they get married within a year and he raises the two children as his own and soon enough they have one more on the way.  They celebrate 50 years together with ups and downs that life brings us and finally on a crisp day in October of 1977 we laid Beatrice to rest, with the proper ceremony and her entire family around her.

Alberta goes on with life and married another professor at the college and the two of them went on to have life a happy life together.  One of their high points was a young teacher in training named Joan (nice name eh?).  They groomed her and took her under their wing and turned her from a young woman to a fine educator.  She later was to become my mother who you will read more about in the other stories in the book as they evolve.  Alberta now had her new husbands name and they were known as Mr. And Mrs. Mackey and nobody thought anything about that there could have been any prior relationship between Alberta and My mothers stepfather whom she did not share a last name with.  Mr. Mackey died at the ripe old age of 78 with his wife by his side in Paskack valley hospital and is buried about 75 yards from my grandmother Beatrice.

Now Otto and Alberta are in their 80s and have not seen each other in sixty some years.  Pop Pop is bopping around the supermarket and bumps into Alberta.  She recognizes Otto.  Instantly they knew each other and after a few phone calls that lasted past midnight, a short courtship, and a trip to Florida to see Otto's brother Charlie, Decide to get married after all those years.  On April 26 1978 Pop Pop (Otto) comes to my house and asks my mother if she thought it would be ok to marry Alberta. You might ask how I can be so sure of this date.  Well Pop Pop was up to celebrate my mothers birthday. Anyway, Mom told him that her mother would never have wanted him to be alone.  Pop Pop told be this was the woman he was supposed to have married (Trying to explain it to an 11 year old) and I asked him how he knew that.  He said it is a idea that pops into you head.  you cant explain where it comes from but it is like God himself puts it there.  They we married in a church in Park Ridge NJ. They sold his home an moved into a quiet neighborhood right down the street from president Nixon.  They had three really happy years together before my grandfather died of a stroke at 83 years of age, Alberta by his side telling him to let go and she would see him on the other side.

Alberta dutifully buried him with Beatrice and went on her way down the road of life.  But we are a family who does not forget.  She always had a place with each of us and to us she was Grandma Berta. She shared every holiday with us and we would all take turns driving to park ridge to do whatever repairs needed doing on her home. She loved us and we loved her.  At the age of 104 she had a stroke and she decided to go into a nursing home.

My uncle Billy became her guardian according to plan. One day she was talking to Uncle Bill and he said he would see her next week.  No she said next Wednesday I am going to die so Thursday will be too late. Bill just blew off the thought and came to see her on Tuesday as she wished.  Wednesday at about 2:00pm he got a call from the nursing home that she had passed.  When he inquired as to the circumstances they told him he was welcome to come in and talk to her friends and get a feeling for exactly what happened that day.  She played 2 rounds of canasta with her buddies, lost one hand and won another.  Finished knitting some caps for a new baby and lied down and died.  That was it.  All investigations from the ME confirmed this, and we buried her as our own our whole family around her as well as the Mackeys.  We laid her to rest with her husband about 75 yards from Otto.