Happy 90th Birthday to My Mother

I know it’s been a while. I wanted to write sooner but I am just emerging from the Seven Circles of Computer Hell. Eleven months and three new computers later, we may be on the road to recovery. I know I’ve railed against the infernal machines before but this was Annus Horribilis, as the Queen would say.

Connectivity was a constant problem and nothing works if you can’t connect with the outside world. I just love it when I call the tech support people and the phone prompts (no one actually ANSWERS the phone anymore) cheerfully say, “You know you can get help on line. All you have to do is connect with www.BiteMe.com and we’ll fix you right up”. Actually, no I can’t. In between repeated house calls and store visits, it was a constant succession of things that worked until they didn’t and things that were visible until they weren’t and on and on.

Now I have ditched a life-long relationship with PC’s in favor of my first Apple/Mac. Steep learning curve there but at least I can operate again. Thank you for your patience.
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I imagine that there are times when most of us want to make a personal note for posterity. I’ll never write a formal memoir and there are no children to pass along the family oral histories. As the only son of an only son, this particular line of Ringger’s ends with me. However, if any in my small, extended family wish to know more about me, this forum might as well be the place to memorialize it…and what better occasion to throw in a few tidbits than the anniversary of my mother’s birth. After all, we are raised by our mothers…especially in my generation.

I remembered my father on his 90th birthday…37 years after he died. We should do the same for his wife and my mother, 19 years after she passed.

Elena Wanda Funk was born in New York City 90 years ago today. She met Dad in high school and told us kids she knew she was going to marry him then and there. They eloped from the Bronx to get married in Maryland in 1944. She was 18 years old and he was 19. After a short honeymoon in Atlantic City, he shipped out. The war ended, Dad returned from Asia and I was conceived ten minutes later. My mother and I started the Baby Boom.

My Junior High School Graduation (1960)

At the Loew’s American Theater in the Parkchester 

neighborhood in the Bronx, JHS 127 held its 

graduation ceremonies. It was during Mom’s platinum 

blonde period. She turned 35 that year.

During the war, she worked in a factory that put together the famous Norden bombsights…one of those great advances in technology that comes from concentrated war efforts. She also sang for the troops in USO shows. After the war, she did what almost all those working women did…returned to the home to ‘keep the house’ and raise the kids.

Christmas 1990

Once we moved to Maryland, it was convenient for 

all of our small family to get together for the holidays. 

We began a tradition where one of us would get all 

of us the same thing. This was the Year of the Red Totes.

While some say I got my argumentative side from Mom, she was also responsible for my appreciation of music. The radio or the record player was always on. While she really liked Sinatra, jazz and Broadway show tunes, we also listened to classical music and what we now call ‘world music’ as well. She was interested and embraced other cultures…something not all that common in our lily white, Bronx neighborhood. I’m certain my musical tastes would have been far less inclusive without her influence.

She loved Fire Island…to a fault, really. My parents never vacationed anywhere else. They never hauled the kids away on driving adventures or had an interest in going anywhere but that bohemian beach scene off Long Island. With the exception of a bus trip to Maryland and D.C. with my grandmother, I did not set foot outside the Tri-state New York metro area until college.

Mom with Jerry Lester, 1953

Just a couple of hours away from Manhattan but not accessible by car, Fire Island still is a favorite getaway spot for artists, writers and showbiz folk. Jerry Lester was a comedian and early TV personality. He was the first to host the late-night program that would become the Tonight Show. He liked to flirt with Mom…as did others.

At 5’ 8”, she was tall for her generation and always preached good posture and standing straight. She liked to drink and smoke…and those vices caught up with her later in life. The years following my father’s death were hard for her. She eventually found a new love while volunteering at a local nursing home but never considered marriage. After defeating throat cancer, heart failure claimed her in 1996.

Mom’s Last Martini (23 July 2010)

In 2010, we took her ashes back to Fire Island for one last visit. One last day on the beach. One last martini at Flynn’s. On the way back, we scattered her ashes off the ferry into Great South Bay where she joined the love of her life as we did the same for Dad years earlier.

Happy Birthday and rest in peace, Mom. Becky can see you and Dad enjoying your next martini together at the Celestial Flynn’s.