Our Families
This was the neutral site for our American Melting Pot Lutheran~Jewish marriage. Although our marriage ended due to ‘unhappy differences’ in 1973, we remain friends, delighted & proud to have produced two sons; four grandsons; one great-grandson with a second great-grandson due September 2016. Update 2026: four great-grandsons and two great-granddaughters.
Bucky and I met at a United Service Organization (USO) event in October 1953 at Silver Spring, Maryland. I was a USO hostess, and he was in the U.S. Navy; we married four months later. A year later, our first son, Donald Steven, was born in Bethesda, MD. Then, when our second son, Mark Alan, arrived in Chicago, IL. 1958, our family was complete.
Both our paternal grandparents immigrated: mine in 1891 from Gross Tuchen, County Bütow, Pommern to St. Joseph, Berrien County, Michigan; his in 1904 from Fălticeni, Suceava County, Romania to Chicago, Cook County, Illinois. Genealogical records for both families are scant or missing: my Tollas~Schultz records were destroyed or lost; his Bernard~Fine records were lost because these, like his Romanian ancestors, perished during the Holocaust. However, my maternal heritage records go back as far as the 1500s, and some of them came to Colonial America shortly after the 1620 Pilgrims in what is known as New England: The Great Migration 1620-1640.
The Tollas~Schultz Family
My father, Alfred Ewald Richard Tollas, was born 26 March 1904 in St. Joseph, Berrien County, Michigan to William & Hulda (Schultz) Tollas. William was twenty when his parents, Albert and Albertina ‘Tina’ (Reischke) Tollas, emigrated in 1892 from Gross Tuchen, County Bütow, Pommern. They settled in St. Joseph, where, three years later, William married Hulda Schultz in March 1895.
Hulda and her parents, Martin & Henrietta (Loraff) Schultz, were also from Pommern; Reinfeld, County Rummelsberg, where Hulda was born in 1885.
In 1885, the family emigrated on the SS Nurnberg from Bremen, Germany, to Baltimore, Maryland. They then traveled on to St. Joseph, where other Loraff and Reischke relatives had settled in 1857.
(Not actually the Nurnberg but a ship of the same class and build.)
For more information about these ancestors, see the Pommern Province, Prussian Ancestors post.
The Bernard~Fein Family
We were both born in Chicago, Illinois. Burton was born July 30, 1932. Elaine was born November 2, 1933.
We spent each summer in a rented cabin on the beach in South Haven, Michigan. Our dad would drive up every weekend to be with us.
We walked in sun, rain and snow to Von Humboldt Elementary School (1st to 8th grades) and used public transportation to attend Roosevelt High School (9th to 12th).
We got our first washing machine in 1946. We would wheel it into the kitchen and connect the hoses to the sink. After running the clothes through the ringer we would hang them to dry on a clothes line outside. Our coin operated telephone (a two-party line) required us to insert a nickel to make a call. Each month a person from the telephone company would stop by and collect the coins. Our telephone number was Humboldt 0835. There were no area codes or zip codes at that time.
In 1947 we were first in the neighborhood with a TV. The picture was in black and white had a 10 inch screen.
Each Friday we would go to our grandparent’s house for the Sabbath dinner with the Bernard aunts, uncles and cousins. We would have chicken soup, chicken, challah, gefilte fish, Mogen David concord wine and plain seltzer water. Grandma would always say a prayer and light the Sabbath candles.