Wednesday, November 9, 2016
I am saddened to learn of the passing of Rhoda whom I knew growing up in Olean from the time she and Mike were married and moved to live next door to our family in Seneca Heights in 1952. I also remember meeting Rhoda's Mom and Dad when they visited her and Mike in Olean.
The connection between the Lown and Rosenbloom families was a very longstanding one within the Olean Jewish Community. I knew Rhoda's mother-in-law as "Aunt Rose". I would often go with my Dad on Sunday mornings to deliver a newspaper to her and collect some treats from the cupboard in her kitchen.
Rhoda and Mike attended my wedding to Margaret in 1965 in my parents home, It was a civil ceremony and a small gathering. Mike signed as a witness on our wedding certificate.
Over the years whenever we visited Olean, Margaret and I would visit Rhoda and Mike and catch up on their family. Whenever Rhoda and Mike's adult children returned to Olean, they always visited with my mother. And my mother updated us with pride through her letters on the developments in Rhoda and Mike's family.
Rhoda added a special vivacity to the intergenerational experience of family and community connection I experienced in Olean
May her memory be a blessing and inspiration for us all and may her soul be bound up in eternal life. She will be very much missed.
Oscar an Margaret Rosenbloom
Palo Alto, California
