You can take the boy out of Garfield

That’s my favorite go-to expression whenever I suspect that my husband, Richard, a well-educated and widely traveled senior has slipped into a small town frame of mind.
 
What do I mean by that? Growing up in the 1950’s, his bucolic little town of Garfield, in northern New Jersey, embodied the vision of the American dream that the future held infinite possibilities.  One of his most treasured childhood memories is standing at his kitchen window, that faced the high school, and listening to the inspiring melodies played by the Garfield Cadets Marching Band as they practiced their intricate routines.  
 
If you applied yourself and worked hard you could achieve whatever you set your mind to.  It was a work ethic he observed daily watching his parents, Abe and Frieda Schwimmer, as they put in a seven day work week for 25 years in their Prospect Pharmacy.  Although his father was the pharmacist, his mother was his right hand and very often even his left. 
 
Richard got to know Garfield intimately the summer that he worked as a postman.  As the new kid on the block they broke him in by giving him the most grueling route.  So on his first day, as he dragged the heavy leather bag up and down the Garfield hills and up and down the long porch steps, he got little satisfaction but a lot of flak.  One elderly lady berated him for being late because she was used to receiving her mail by 10a.m. and here it was already after 2p.m.
 
He came home exhausted and discouraged.   When he complained to his parents, who knew something about exhaustion, they told him to suck it up and deal with it. Valuable advice that served him well later in life when he was faced with other unpleasant experiences, like 24-hour workdays when he was a medical intern.
 
A little family history now follows.  His mother was born on the lower east-side in NYC to a family who came to America with a wave of Russian Jewish immigrants in the late 1800’s.  His father and grandmother came here from Czechoslovakia in 1908 when he was just an infant.  In the 1930’s his father aspired to be a doctor but religious quotas and economic hardships kept him from receiving a medical education.  Instead he attended the Columbia University School of Pharmacy.  And so, along with the antibiotics and the cold remedies, he also dispensed a generous dose of TLC to anyone who walked through the door of the Prospect Pharmacy.   
 
The Schwimmers, along with the Turetsky family, the proprietors of the local liquor store, and the Meltzer family who took care of everyone’s sporting goods needs, were among a small group of Jewish families who owned businesses along bustling Outwater Lane.  Although the Jewish population of Garfield consisted of only ten families they built the Garfield Jewish Center, which became the center of their social activities. Abe Schwimmer served as its president from 1963-64.  For the holidays they attended services at Temple Emmanuel in nearby Passaic where Abe was also a member of the choir.
 
While the Schwimmers were pursuing the American dream, my parents, survivors of the Holocaust, and my brother and I languished in a Displaced Persons camp in Germany. We were finally able to immigrate to America in 1951 where my father, a master craftsman, rebuilt his life by helping rebuild Brooklyn.  Richard and I met in 1968, a blind date that has lasted 49 years.  Together we have built a life and a family with three children who each have families of their own who we are blessed to see often since we all live within the tri-state area.  
 
After graduating Brooklyn College with a B.A. degree in English, I worked in the advertising field throughout my husband’s years at Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia and during his internship and residency at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx.  He was among the last group of doctors who were officially drafted into the military from 1974 to 1976. He fulfilled his obligation to Uncle Sam by serving as one of two pediatricians who cared for dependent children at Loring Air Force Base in Limestone, Maine where over 600 newborns were delivered each year.
 
There was no ICU at the base hospital so whenever my husband had an at-risk newborn he had to summon the MedEvac plane to transport the infant to Walter Reed Hospital in Bethesda, Maryland.  It was a DC-9 fully equipped hospital that he compared to the space age Goldfinger plane in the James Bond movie.  
 
Loring, a Strategic Air Command Base, was located at the northernmost tip of the state of Maine so it often took over six hours for the MedEvac, which flew throughout the country, to reach the base. Whenever a severely ill newborn needed intensive care during Richard’s medical training, my husband was accustomed to immediately transferring the baby to the ICU in his New York hospital; however, on the military base precious hours were wasted waiting for the MedEvac.   Richard found that unacceptable.  So what did he do?  He complained!  Almost instantly his complaint was passed along to the base wing commander who arrived at the nursery to assess the situation.  Although he couldn’t help on that day he promised that the next time there was an emergency he would have a KC 135 tanker plane, a modified Boeing 707, whose main mission is to refuel other planes, at my husband’s disposal.  The wing commander, a very imposing figure who looked like a cross between Generals Patton and Schwarzkopf, was as good as his word.
 
One specific infant comes to mind, a preemie that weighed only one and a half pounds.  I watched in awe as the hospital personnel loaded the tiny incubator onto the enormous Air Force tanker plane, a scene that was to be repeated numerous times so that they were able to save many lives as a result of this innovation.
 
My husband and I fell in love with Maine and planned to settle in Bangor after his date of separation from the Air Force, July 4, 1976, when he was officially retired as Major Schwimmer.  However, family obligations brought us back to Brooklyn where my husband was introduced to his partner of 18 years, Dr. Leonard Sacharow z”l.  

Dr. Schwimmer insisted on practicing medicine the old fashioned way by making house calls on his little patients.  During the energy crisis of 1979 he invested in a moped and drove all over Brooklyn with his black bag perched in a basket behind him.  One night a cop stopped him, curious about his license plate, MDKIDS. He was amazed to learn that a doctor was riding around making house calls in such an unconventional vehicle.
 
Just another example of the small town boy whose life was built on the solid foundation provided for him by his parents and dedicated teachers, like Mrs. Vesta Smith of Woodrow Wilson School No. 5, who nurtured his ambitions so that he can proudly say that although he left Garfield over fifty years ago, Garfield has never left him. Helen Zegerman Schwimmer, member of the JHSNJ
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This story is adapted from Helen Zegerman Schwimmer’s inspiring book, The Wedding Gown That Made History & Other Stories, available from amazon.com.  For more information please visit helenschwimmer.com