Norma Cantor Wachtel

March 30, 1915 – December 13, 2005

Norma Wachtel’s autobiography as transcribed by her son, Ken Wachtel

At this stage in my life I am being called upon to relate the “story of my life.” I approach this project with an ambivalence of feelings. I want my children to know that I, as well as they, are products of 4,000 years of history. But, memories can bring many sadnesses. However, facts must be related or we wonder “why?” at some future date, didn’t I ask my mother that? Therefore, for history’s sake, for the sake of my children, and for myself, I will attempt to place myself in time.

Joseph Hornick

April 22, 1918 – November 9, 2002

Eulogy by Sandy Hornick

I don’t really know how to eulogize my dad, and in talking to my brother and sister I’m aware of impressions and memories we share and others we hold uniquely. One way I remember dad uniquely is his teaching me that patience is a virtue, so I wanted to remember my father today by some of his traits, ones that would be high on anyone’s list of virtues: Perseverance, Family, Loyalty, Responsibility, and Faith.

My father had to persevere almost from the beginning of his life. Early on, his life was threatened by a severe case of scarlet fever, in an era before antibiotics. Yet he found the strength to survive. In the hard times of his youth, he had to help with the candy store or with his dad’s super’s responsibilities.

I don’t want to suggest dad was the perfect child. In one of the stories that for some strange reason we didn’t hear until we were adults, dad was confronted with an unwanted glass of milk that he was obligated to drink. This problem he solved brilliantly by pouring the milk in the drawer with my grandmother’s starched curtains.

Growing Up

Four score and seven years ago, Herb was born in Manhattan. His family moved often, and he grew up in Manhattan, the Bronx, and Brooklyn. By 1938, he was living with his mother and sister in a Lower East Side housing project called Knickerbocker Village; his upstairs neighbors were Ethel and Julius Rosenberg.

He graduated from Morris High School in 1931 and went to Brooklyn College at night. After college, he graduated from Fordham Law School, but the Depression intervened, and he took any job he could get until the start of the war.