When we were small, we visited her on Douglas Street. We were told that this was the backyard where my grandfather Hymie, planted his tomatoes before he died when I was barely 4 years old. She was young-looking and very active. She prided herself on the time that she overhead someone wondering whether she was our very old mother or very young grandmother.
Every December, Mama Mary took my brother Marty and me downtown on the bus to have lunch at the Kaufmann's department store's Tic-Toc shop and then to buy a Hanukkah present. One time I very disappointedly ordered a hamburger because I did not see a hot dog on the menu. I was miffed when I saw what arrived after my brother ordered a frankfurter! Each year Marty quickly picked a present, but I spent a long time deciding. Mama Mary was very patient with her grandchildren.
Later she moved to the Wendover and then the Maxon Towers on Forbes near Shady. We visited her often, and we went to her house for dinner once a week. When we were teenagers, her hamburgers were the best food in the world. One evening Marty set the record by eating eight!
Mama Mary was very happy when she remarried, to Samuel Weisberg (another dentist). Unfortunately it was not too many years later when she was widowed again.
One of Mama Mary's passions was travel, and she loved to show her albums of pictures of her travels. In the last few years she was showing a lot of senility and needed a companion to live with her. But even when she was constantly forgetting what she had already said, I loved visiting her and going through those same albums with the same stories each time.
Howard Seltman