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Uncle Harold (Roth, my mother Beatrice's brother) has a long list of accomplishments. After his WW II duties ended he married Marjorie Englander (she's been my personal Marjorie Morningstar all these years.) Well they all called him "Bosco" then and he was pursuing the social sciences when he serendipitously met a stranger on a New York bound train who would alter his life by offering him a job in publishing. (This was the 40's and stuff like that happened in the movies then so it might as well have happened in real life too.)The company was Simon and Shuster and Uncle Harold was tapped to create and head the very first successful paperback book division called Pocket Books (remember the kangaroo with the book in its pouch?) He later served as President of Grosset and Dunlop and published such luminaries as Norman Mailer and President Nixon. (The whole family once trooped over to the President's home Whittier and... well... that's another story.)
I think my fondest memories of the Roths revolve around Thanksgiving at their home on Bayard Street and then at Carleon Drive in Larchmont, New York. Sweet potato pie with marshmallow topping, hmmmm; Lou Englander sitting with cigar in hand telling stories; Fofie's husband Irving singing and playing the piano; we kids running like crazy around the house or the neighborhood. Year after year after year...I was certain this would just go on forever.
Uncle Harold is active today as a business arbitrator. He recently mediated a deal involving Leona Helmsley. My Aunt Marjorie once ran a movie location business in New York. Today she mainly dotes over her family and looks after their various homes in San Diego, Manhattan and West Hampton, NY.
