Sunday, August 20, 2017
Dear Young, John, Dana, and Lisa. Please accept my condolences upon the passing of Henry. As the daughter of Eugene in Ohio, I knew of Henry as one of the "Neumann family cousins" borne to my father's brother (Albert) and sister (Ellen) in New York City. My first real memory was 1962 (?) at Henry's parent's home (Bessie and Albert) in New Jersey on the occasion of our mutual grandparents' (Jeanie and Albert) 50th wedding anniversary. Henry was about a decade older than me, good looking, attending university and pursing a profession. I was 10 and took heart from the idea that if a Neumann could go to university and be happy (he looked happy to me), then I could too. My second memory was after 1995. I had managed to go to university, moved to London UK, married and pursued a profession. Through the mechanism of letters, Henry and I arranged to meet up after I finished a job in New York. He drove in from New Jersey and picked me up. During the lengthy commute, we exchanged gossip and stories of water under the bridge of our extended family. It was our one and only one-to-one conversation. What struck me during that condominium Thanksgiving (along with two of Henry's adolescents) was reinforced the third and last time we met in Coral Gables, Florida at the wedding of cousin Albert's daughter. Henry valued the cultural importance of rituals and ceremonies in maintaining continuity of family life. His generation lived at conflicting boundaries between traditions and modernity. I respected Henry's openness about sorrow and regret as an element in being true to those beliefs and values. As few as there times of meeting were, I am glad to call Henry family. In extended connectedness and love, Jeanie Neumann
