In 1926, while flaming youth roared and thousands mourned the death of Rudolph Valentino, my grandparents, Sadie and Arthur Joseph, were overjoyed at the birth of their second daughter, Betty Francine, my mother.

Always a joyous Bastille Day Birthday, this jazz age baby would have turned 100 today.

This sepia-toned photograph and the baby it documents are now a century old. Mounted on thick cream colored board, and embossed in gold on the back is the name of the photography studio: B. Bloch 543 Fulton Street, Brooklyn.

Today, holding this well-preserved one-hundred-year-old picture in my hands, a whole story unfolds in my mind of the day this photo of my future mother, Betty, was taken.

Unlike today’s iphones when we can effortlessly capture every nuance of a baby’s life, a formal baby portrait was a special occasion. And it required patience.

Mr B. Bloch knew when to release the shutter.

A Baby is Born

In July of 1926, while mother and newborn baby were rooming together at Mt Sinai Hospital in New York for the standard 14-day maternity stay, her husband, my grandfather Arthur, got down to practical business.

Making an appointment for Betty’s official baby portrait.

An amateur shutterbug, Arthur wanted the best for Betty, and B. Bloch was the man.  This popular, well-established studio in the heart of downtown Brooklyn had been well respected since the late 19th century and was often booked months in advance. Arthur made the appointment for late autumn.

The studio located on bustling Fulton street Brooklyn, not far from A&S Department Store is already alive by 10 o’clock that November morning when the Josephs arrived in a taxi from their home in Crown Heights. The electric trolley cars were clanging their bells, the autos honking,  the elevated train rumbling overhead, its steel wheels producing a familiar metallic roar.

After walking up a flight of polished wood stairs, they stop at the frosted glass doors with the Bloch name in elegant gold script.

In the well-appointed waiting room, decorated with Persian rugs and dark oak wainscoting, the family settles into the soft upholstered chairs with carved walnut arms.

Adjacent to them stands a large mahogany cabinet displaying dozens of mounted portraits and silver trophies from photographic exhibitions.  Sadie scans the cream-colored walls filled with dozens of framed pictures, all beautifully lit, of young women graduating from Erasmus Hall High School,  soldiers from the Great War, college graduates, and a bride holding lilies.

It could be Betty’s future laid out in photos.

Mr B Bloch

Mr. B Bloch, a distinguished gentleman wearing round spectacles, his gray hair carefully brilliantined, comes out to greet them, ushering the family into the studio.

The portrait studio is astonishingly bright. A skylight spans much of the ceiling, and the daylight is soft and slanting. Electric Mazda incandescent studio lamps stand at the ready.

It is hard to tell who was more captivated by the sights, baby Betty or her father Arthur.

My grandfather’s eyes light up, immediately drawn to the camera that dominates the room. An enormous 8x 10 Eastman view camera of polished mahogany mounted on a heavy Century Studio Stand. Brass controls gleam in the light, and the enormous bellows extend nearly two feet.

Arthur silently notices the simple backdrops now considered sophisticated. Unlike earlier baby portraits, there are no elaborate props like painted gardens, lace curtains, painted castles, or sentimental accessories. Everything is understated, with simple textured backdrops.

The photographer wanted the viewer’s attention on the subject herself.  Nothing should compete with the baby.

Baby Betty Is Ready For Her Close Up

Betty was dressed simply, no bonnet, no lace, or oversized ribbons, and was seated on a wicker chair, intended for babies and toddlers. Plopped down, she sits on an enormous cushion overstuffed so the baby would sink ever so slightly, preventing her from sliding forward.

The photographer waits until she is settled naturally, rather than in a forced pose.

Very few babies smiled in photographs before the 1930s because exposures still required some stillness. Instead, Betty is looking calm and curious, almost evaluating the photographer. There is a dignity in that expression, and she is treated almost like an adult sitter.

The photographer recognized it. Instead of making her laugh, he photographed her exactly as she was.

It was all about waiting. Nothing happens quickly.  Photography in 1926 is an act of observation rather than capture.

A Moment Captured For a Century

My future mother Betty 1926

Bloch watches her for several minutes before even uncovering the camera. The room is warm from the steam radiator that hisses softly as steam cycles through the pipes.

Then Mr Bloch disappears beneath the black cloth, studies the upside-down image while you hear only his voice from inside.

He slides a film holder onto the back of the camera. Removes the dark slide. There is a pause everyone is silent for perhaps 3 seconds.

Betty’s eyes drift toward the camera lens. For one brief moment, she looks directly into the camera. Not smiling, simply curious.  Observant. It is an expression impossible to manufacture and an expression I would recognize in my life with her. Bloch gently squeezes the rubber bulb attached to the shutter release.

A nearly inaudible click.

One eighth of a second and a lifetime preserved. To be held in her daughter’s hand a century later. Shared on the internet in one hundred years.

Bloch smiles with the satisfaction of experience.  “I believe,” he says, sliding the film holder from the camera, “your daughter just made a very fine portrait.”

Afterwards, there is no instant result, no preview. The negative disappears into the darkroom. Nothing can be seen yet. My grandparents trust the photographer’s confidence.

Before they leave, Mr. Bloch shows them samples of embossed presentation folders and mounted prints. They order several prints for grandparents and aunts. The order is carefully handwritten into the ledger. The finished photograph will be ready in about 10 days.

A Moment in Time

The picture captures a child born into the optimism of 1926. The portrait is more than a family keepsake; it stands at the threshold of an era.

Smack dab in the middle of the roaring twenties, eight years had passed since the end of the Great War, and Americans were ready for fun. Our president, Silent Cal was keeping mum as the economy skyrocketed. Consuming goods as never before, folks were running down to Florida in get-rich-quick schemes, while Miss Texas Guineas, the boop-boop-de-doop speakeasy girl, beckoned us “to live it up.”

Now, looking back a century later, we know the history that lies ahead. That Betty does not. That quiet, direct gaze embodies the innocence of a moment before the upheavals that would shape the rest of the twentieth century.

In retrospect, knowing the upheavals that would follow, the Great Depression, another World War, and the Cold War, the moment becomes poignant.

Inside the studio, time has briefly stood still.

A few seconds of light were fixed onto a sheet of film, preserving not only the likeness of my future mother, Betty, but also a family’s confidence in the future, their faith in the American promise.

I cherish this picture as I cherish my mother. Today and always.

© Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream, 2026. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

What happens when the country you pledged allegiance to is no longer the country you recognize?

A worn third-grade civics book becomes the lens through which I examine America’s broken promises. Beginning with the patriotic lessons of my 1963 classroom, I Am An American traces how a generation raised to believe in democracy, compassion, and the common good came to witness those ideals unravel under Donald Trump.

Part memoir, part cultural history, and part elegy, the visual essay asks what patriotism means when loving your country also means mourning what it has become.

I am pleased to share this visual essay with you.

“Communism is a mortal threat to American liberty,” a protective president warned a nervous nation during a July 4th  speech.

The Communists are coming, people. They are living among us. This is no time to duck and cover. Get out from under your desks and fight this evil force.

But that president was not Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1956.

It was Donald J. Trump, in 2026, echoing the anti communist zeal from mid 20th century.

I did not have communism on my bingo card for fear-stoking buzzwords in 2026.

Trump bashing Democrats as Godless communists is straight out of the Cold War fear factor playbook of my mid-century childhood.

It is a familiar Cold War doomsday scenario brought into the 21st century.

Red Menace

The fear of Communist infiltration, not only militarily but politically, was a common thread throughout my childhood. Americans were convinced hidden communists were lurking everywhere, secretly infiltrating our government, including our very own State Department.

Like those two scheming cartoon villains, Boris Badenov and Natasha Fatale, those no-goodnik spies carrying out Fearless Leader’s secret evil plots, communists were sinister, sneaky plotters carrying out covert actions just waiting to overthrow a government…including our own.

Is This Tomorrow?

“Is This Tomorrow,” published by Catechetical Guild Educational Society, 1947

One famous 1947 comic book entitled “Is This Tomorrow – America Under Communism” was an over-the-top tale typical of the time, alerting us to the dangers of a Russian Communist takeover. Over 48 colorful pages, it illustrated just how easy it would be for the Reds to take over the U.S.

It Can’t Happen Here:

The comic opens with a dire warning to the young reader:

IS THIS TOMORROW is published for one purpose – TO MAKE YOU THINK! To make you more alert to the menace of Communism. “Is This Tomorrow,” published by Catechetical Guild Educational Society, 1947

“Is This Tomorrow,” published by Catechetical Guild Educational Society 1947

Taking their orders directly from Moscow, the story revolves around a group of American Communists led by a man named “Jones” and his propaganda advisor “Brown,” a sinister Stevn Miller character who explains how they will manipulate the American media as a precursor to their Kremlin-approved takeover of the U.S.

“Is This Tomorrow,” published by Catechetical Guild Educational Society 1947

“Is This Tomorrow,” published by Catechetical Guild Educational Society 1947

“Is This Tomorrow,” published by Catechetical Guild Educational Society 1947

They manipulate strike leaders and stoke racial, class, and religious hatred to help weaken America for the communists’ eventual takeover.

“Is This Tomorrow” published by Catechetical Guild Educational Society 1947

“Is This Tomorrow,” published by Catechetical Guild Educational Society 1947

“Is This Tomorrow,” published by Catechetical Guild Educational Society 1947

“Is This Tomorrow” published by Catechetical Guild Educational Society 1947

Race baiting and taking advantage of the things that divided this country worked to their advantage.

“Is This Tomorrow,” published by Catechetical Guild Educational Society 1947

After the plot to assassinate the president and vice president is successful, the party operatives have successfully infiltrated the government, and Jones controls the Speaker of the House (who is now the new president ). Behind the scenes, Jones becomes the”Chief Advisor” and expands the Executive Powers.

“Is This Tomorrow,” published by Catechetical Guild Educational Society 1947

“Is This Tomorrow” published by Catechetical Guild Educational Society 1947

Destabilizing journalism as a check on the power of government is quickly implemented. Anyone critical is swiftly punished, and unfavorable newspapers are denied newsprint until they agree with the party line. The telephone system and radio network are now nationalized.

“Is This Tomorrow” published by Catechetical Guild Educational Society 1947

“Is This Tomorrow” published by Catechetical Guild Educational Society 1947

INCREDIBLE?

“Did our story seem incredible? It is unbelievable—that such a small group could ever dream of enforcing its will upon the majority. But remember that a group for smaller than the number of Communists living and working in America today seized control of Russia in 1917.

No one can refuse to believe what he knows to be true. And we do know that every method shown in this presentation has been used by the Communists in their rise to power in other countries. Starvation, murder, slavery, force—those are the tools the Communists use to carry out the doctrine of Communism.

The Communists are preparing to seize control of America in any crisis. This crisis, real or contrived—will be there signal to move in… and make their bid for power.

This crisis might begin with a flood in Pennsylvania—a drought in the Middle West. Or it might begin with a general strike in some of our large industrial cities—New York—Detroit—Chicago—San Francisco.

It happened in Poland, Hungary, Yugoslavia, and country after country, the world over.

WHERE DO YOU COME IN?

You are the one with whom the Communist is struggling right now. His aim is to make you hate your fellow man and keep you blind to the important things in life. He wants to make you forget the importance of your right to vote as you please—to say what you please—to go where you please—to worship as you please. The Communist really wants you to forget all your rights to individual freedom and liberty.

But you cannot assume your individual rights without assuming individual responsibility.

If you want to keep on living, you must know who the Communists are—and their methods of working. You must recognize the Communist Party line in action and separate Communist propaganda from the factual news of the day.

You are on the defensive in this battle. You owe it to yourself to know all about the invader. He knows more about you than you suspect.

Laughable for its implausibility, it’s Trump and the Republicans have made it their campaign strategy to maintain control.

© Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream, 2026. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Last week with our 250th birthday in mind, I walked through my town of Huntington, Long Island. Settled in 1653, over a century before the Declaration of Independence, it is steeped in American history.

Climbing the hill to the old Town Hall with its monumental porticoed front and prominent clock tower, I stood among the rows of flapping American flags, letting them wrap around me in the breeze.

I was surrounded by dozens of bronze and stone memorials and plaques honoring local veterans dating back to the Revolutionary War. I thought of these soldiers and sailors, and nurses who had served, and made the ultimate sacrifice in the Civil War, the Spanish American War, The Great War, WWII, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan.

I wondered what they would think of the country they left to us. We were the stewards of all they fought for.

There didn’t feel much to celebrate on July 4th.

Photo: Jon Martin

On a bookshelf in my cluttered office is a small, hardcover book I was given in third grade. The well-worn book nestled in between My Dick Jane and Sally primers is titled  I Am an American.

This book was brand new when I was assigned it on the first day of school in 1963. The pages were still crisp with firm, uncreased edges, and the spine was still stiff, opening it for the first time.

The book was new, but the ideas were as old as our country.

The mission of the book, as explained by the author Olive Burt was “to start children out from the very first with the knowledge that this country has something different and unique and worth fighting for, something to brag about.”

And once upon a time, and not that long ago, we did brag.

Today I long for that.

In our history books of the early 1960s, America was the shining beacon, the greatest nation, and the embodiment of democracy, freedom, generosity, and technological progress.

America’s great wealth and power required us to provide not merely a moral example but also moral leadership for the rest of the world.

We were racing boldly and confidently into the future.

That fall, my third-grade teacher, Mrs. Patton, a large battle axe of a woman who seemed ancient but was likely younger than I am now, handed out these new books.

Sitting at my antiquated wooden desk,I flipped through the book as  the teacher read out loud to us words that stayed with me long after that class:

“ The book,” she began in her booming Margaret Dumont voice, “explains our country’s creed.”

“Nearly 200 years ago,”  she read, “the great and wise men of our country met and wrote down the things Americans believe. They wanted the whole world to know what this new nation believed about the way people should be governed.”

“They called this the Declaration of Independence. These wise men had ideas that were different from the rest of the world.”

“We hold these truths to be self-evident… that all men are created equal”

“What did it all mean?”

“First of all it means that every person has the same rights as everyone else. No one is born with the right to rule others. No one can say, ‘I am the captain, whether you like it or not!’”

“After those wise men wrote that letter telling the world that they were going to start a new nation, they knew they needed a set of rules to live by.

They called it the Constitution.

When you read the Constitution, you see all the things that were written in to protect me and my right to live as I wish.

We elect our officials

“They do not govern us according to their whims. They simply see that the rules we have made are kept by us all.”

“Americans are proud of what they have built.”

“But nothing means more to them than the freedoms they have won and written into the Constitution”

After she finished reading, Mrs. Patton asked each of us to memorize a passage from the book about what being an American meant for each of us.  In a few weeks, we would each recite it to the class with our parents in attendance.

Painfully shy, I panicked at the thought of speaking in front of a group.

I read through the book and found just the right passage of what being an American meant to me.

For weeks, I practiced with my mother the passage I had chosen, often sitting at the Formica kitchen table while she peeled yellow onions or scraped russet potatoes.

I memorized these words perfectly, repeating them to myself as I brushed my teeth and combed my hair. I found a receptive and approving audience to my recitation with Barbie and Ken, and at the end of the day in my cozy bed before I fell asleep, I whispered them to a captive audience of one, my plush tiger Teddy.

These words, these pictures, these beliefs would be seared into me for the rest of my life.

I Am An American

On a chilly Friday afternoon in early December, dressed in a brand new red plaid woolen jumper, I nervously stood in front of the class. My blonde hair may have been Breck shining clean, but my cheeks burned as red as my jumper as I recited the passage I had chosen.

As I stood before the class and recited the words, the flag hung behind me, next to a glossy black and white photograph of President John F. Kennedy. It had only been two weeks since our young president had been assassinated.

The first cracks in my midcentury American Dream had begun.

Yet I trusted that these important words I memorized about what it meant to be an American were immutable.

Nervously, I looked out at the classroom with its rows of perfectly aligned desks filled with familiar classmates and their less familiar parents seated on our small wooden chairs.

Like the other fathers, my own ex-GI Dad was AWOL, reporting for duty in a grey flannel suit in a faraway office.

But in a sea of beehives and bouffant hair, I saw my mother smiling at me.

Suddenly, my voice was strong because I knew I was speaking about something profound.

What I could not know,  what I did not know, was what the future held.

“I am an American

If you ask me what that means

I’ll answer

These things I must do:

I must speak the truth as I see the truth;

I must play by the rules that are fair.

I must not laugh at another’s ways,

Or take more than is my share.

I must do no thing that will cause me shame.

I must walk tall and brave and free,

And I must help others to have

The rights that mean so much to me.

“We the people, we will make sure that we remain free, and that our children and our children’s children are free forever

I am one of those ‘children’s children’ they were thinking about. I am glad they made the rules to last till I came along.

I am going to help keep them for those who come after me.”

There was a hush when I finished, and then all at once the parents clapped loudly. I looked at the smiling audience filled with the greatest generation, all beaming, none more so than my own mother.

For over 80 years, that was the America we knew.

Under Donald Trump, America, my America, has been betrayed.

Cruelty has replaced humanity as the Congress Trump has hijacked, pulled the plug on healthcare and food assistance to millions, both here and abroad.

It marked the end of social compassion and the rise of an era of authoritarian oligarchy.

Where is that America that I pledged allegiance to?

Beginning in kindergarten in 1961, I spent every morning for the next dozen years standing tall next to my school desk with my right hand over my heart, pledging allegiance to a country that promised liberty and justice for all.

We may not have realized our ideals fully, but we always moved to correct them.

My hand grew, as did the country. I watched it change, stumble at times, but grow.

It’s what I expected of America. That was American Exceptionalism to me – our ability to constantly move forward, help those in need, expand our knowledge, and right our wrongs.

We would always strive to do better.

That America is gone….

I Pledge Allegiance

I learned the Pledge of Allegiance in a suburban classroom filled with second-generation Americans.

They were predominantly of Italian, Eastern European, and Irish descent. All groups that had been discriminated against and unwanted at one time. As a third-generation American with grandparents born in this country, I was an anomaly.

I was proud of that history but never felt more of an American than my classmates, the grandchildren of immigrants who had traveled in crowded ships across the Atlantic, landing in Ellis Island. They left pogroms and crushing poverty with their meager belongings, clutching tightly onto the hope that America promised.

Today, our neighbors hide in fear as masked men roam the streets of our cities and towns like the Gestapo, scooping up immigrant mothers, fathers, and children. Someone’s sister, brother, husband, or wife. Our police state is now fully funded.

My America is gone….

Trump’s Golden Age is not golden for WE the People.

Even as I move forward chronologically, our country is moving backwards as a society.

The social welfare programs put in place as guardrails that I believed would protect me in my old age, are slowly being dismantled.

There will be nothing golden about my golden years.

I am crying for America.

Today I cry for our country, for my parents, my grandparents, and great-grandparents who came to this country filled with promise, all who loved this country, fought for this country, and believed in the possibility of America.

I cry at my father’s grave, inscribed with his favorite saying:  “It’s your America,” a phrase filled with boosterish post-war possibilities of the greatness of our nation, where anything is possible.

No, Daddy,  “it is  not  my America.”

The rights that mean so much to me.

And it brings me to tears.

I am An American.

And for the first time, I am ashamed.

As America celebrates its 250th  anniversary, its mourning in America.

I mourn for our country.

I cry for the millions who will lose the safety nets so primal to being an American. I cry that children and babies will go hungry.

In my America.

Where is that America that I pledged allegiance to?

I cry for this patriotic, flag-waving, red, white, and blue, idealistic  7-year-old girl.  who believed in the inherent goodness of America, as she lived out her parents’ post-war American suburban dream.

Now, on our 250th Independence Day, we are being stripped of our freedoms and rights.

This is not my father’s America.

This is not my America.

This is not Our America

And it brings me to tears.

As an American.

Copyright (©) 2026 Sally Edelstein All Rights Reserved

Coming Soon- The Video of “I Am An American”

Everything about Trump’s tacky, self-indulgent atrocity billed as a Birthday Celebration was vulgar.

The travesty was worse than we imagined. A violent, Vegas-style carousel of greased-up men duking it out Gladiator style on the White House lawn, desecrating sacred ground as the rich and powerful cheered on. An abomination that ended with a vile and racist comment.

All while the average American cannot afford healthcare, gas, and the cost of living.

Imagine a U.S. president using his birthday for the good of the people.

We don’t have to imagine.

Once upon a time, we had a leader whose birthday celebrations were worthy of an American president. Who used his birthday for a good cause.

For the American people.

Imagine that.

In fact, those celebrations once filled my imagination as a child, fueled by the stories told to me by my grandmother. While other little girls were enchanted by the story of Cinderella and her Ball, I loved hearing my Nana Sadie’s recollection of attending President Franklin Roosevelt’s Birthday Balls at the glamorous Waldorf Astoria Hotel.

For his entire presidency, FDR turned his birthdays into massive fundraisers. Known as Birthday Balls, these star-studded events were held nationwide to raise money for polio research and treatment at Warm Springs, Georgia. In his honor, they would be held every January 30th, his birthday, in cities and towns across the nation beginning in 1934.

capt

We once had a president who used his birthdays for a good cause. Souvenir Program Waldorf Astoria 1934. Illustration Howard Chandler Christy

That first year of the Birthday Balls, more than 6,000 dances were held around the country, celebrating President Roosevelt’s 52nd birthday.

The tagline for the events? “Dance So That Others May Walk.” And nowhere was the dancing more elegant than at New York’s glamorous Waldorf-Astoria Hotel on Park Avenue, where they danced into the midnight hours for a good cause- to end the scourge of polio.

The dazzling gala drew thousands of sophisticated attendees in white tie and evening gowns, including my grandparents, Sadie and Arthur Joseph.

Unlike Cinderella, no Fairy Godmother was waving a magic wand, bestowing tickets to the ball for this Brooklyn couple.

My grandfather, Arthur, had worked tirelessly on the Roosevelt 1932 Presidential campaign as a fundraiser and was active in the Kings County Democratic organization. By 1934, his dedicated service had earned him not only an invitation to the Inaugural Ball but a place among the thousands who attended the Birthday Ball.

As a child, I loved flipping through my grandmother’s old leather-bound photo album, the thick black paper pages gently crumbling, and the fading photos held in place by black paper corners. One lone snapshot of my grandparents, taken by my mother’s 12-year-old sister Judy, was the only documentation of the Birthday Ball, the description written in silver ink.

The memories lasted longer than any photo.

In the sepia-toned photo, this couple from Crown Heights dressed to the nines looked like the epitome of Café Society.

In a dress worthy of Cinderella, my grandmother would describe in detail her outfit for the ball, bringing to life the faded image in the photograph. Purchased at Bonwit Teller for the occasion, the dress was a midnight blue, bias-cut silk satin gown by Mainbocher, trimmed with silver beading.  Accented with a long strand of cultured pearls and diamond clip brooches, elbow-length white kidskin gloves, and a silver fox, she sure looked swellegant.

Standing next to her, my grandfather was equally dapper in his Hickey Freeman white tie, with the black wool tailcoat and white pique waistcoat, starched shirt and wing collar, mother-of-pearl studs, white gloves, and black silk top hat.

Taxi Ride

There was no pumpkin turned into a carriage to take them to the ball, but they had reserved a roomy, streamlined taxi for the night to take them across the East River from their Brooklyn home on Montgomery Street to midtown Manhattan.

Lucky for them, because the very next week would see a city-wide taxi riot leading to violence and a strike. Depression weary cab drivers rioted, dragging out passengers, smashing windows, and ripping doors off the cabs.

Arriving at the famed hotel, they were greeted by the uniformed doorman beneath the Waldorf’s bronze and glass entrance. The doormen in their iconic military-inspired design of maroon coats paired with gold accents, braided detail, and peaked caps, set the standard for luxury hotels during this era.

Waldorf Astoria made the 1930s NYC skyline unique

The Art Deco hotel on Park Avenue had only opened in that location three years earlier, in 1931.

The luxurious hotel had originally opened on Fifth Avenue in 1897. When it relocated to its iconic Art Deco home on Park Avenue,  it was at the time the largest and tallest hotel in the world. The original Fifth Avenue location was demolished in 1929 to make way for the construction of the Empire State Building, which opened in 1931.

“New York Daily News,” Jan. 31, 1934 Coverage of the FDR Birthday Ball at the Waldorf Astoria

At the star-studded event, the president’s mother, Sara Delano Roosevelt, was the guest of honor, who attended on his behalf.  Other luminaries were entertainer Rudy Vallee and Mayor LaGuardia. The champagne and cocktails flowed and could be served legally with the repeal of Prohibition.

A highlight of the evening, my grandmother would gush, was the parading of a five-tiered presidential birthday cake onto the Waldorf Astoria ballroom floor. The confectionery masterpiece was surrounded by fifty-two NYC debutantes, gowned in shimmering white satin and ruffles of white chiffon, wearing birthday cake-shaped hats and carrying two-foot-long white candles “lit by the latest in portable battery gadgets.”

One girl for each year in the President’s life. These young girls were living symbols of a nation’s love and admiration for its president.

On the stage, the girls formed themselves into the shape of a birthday cake, holding the candles straight up over their heads and lighting them from concealed electric batteries.

Mrs. Roosevelt ceremoniously cut the birthday cake. The debutantes chanted a happy birthday song, toasts were made, and the candles were auctioned off.

For the main event, Broadway legend George M.Cohan  performed a new Roosevelt anthem entitled “The Happiest Birthday I’ve Ever Known” for the thousands of attendees:

“What a lucky day for the U.S.A. / What a man, how he leads the way / What a heart, what a mind, what a plan / What a blessing to the nation, what a man!” 

The message of goodwill to the President symbolized what was going on all over the country at the same time.

The first President’s Birthday Ball raised over one million dollars, nationwide, for the cause of infantile paralysis. ( Twenty One  million in today’s dollars )

Radio Address

At 11:30, Franklin Roosevelt made a live radio address with a personal message of thanks; a broadcast that would be heard in the auditoriums, ballrooms, halls, and camps hosting the celebrations.

A hush fell over the festivities, my grandmother recalled,  at the first sound of Roosevelt’s voice. To the thousands in attendance, their “Mr. President” may have been the absent guest of honor, but this New Deal President was there in spirit, and his radio address was applauded by a receptive and united audience.

Overwhelmed by the outpouring of affection and admiration, he thanked them all for their support and also shared encouragement for the cause so close to his heart.

“Let us well remember that every child and indeed every person who is restored to useful citizenship is an asset to the country and is enabled “to pull his own weight in the boat.” In the long run, by helping this work we are contributing not to charity but to the building up of a sound Nation. . . I am with you all in spirit and in the promotion of this great cause for which we all are crusading.”

He concluded by thanking his vast audience, “but lack the words to tell you how deeply I appreciate what you have done and I bid you good night on what is to me the happiest birthday I have ever known.”

Postscript

Franklin Delano Memorial in Washington DC with his beloved dog Fala. “What a blessing to the nation, what a man!” 

The clock struck midnight, but the magic of Franklin Roosevelt did not end, either for the Ball or for the good works that Roosevelt did for this country. FDR’s legacy has underpinned our modern American social safeguards and economic framework.

They are the foundation of everything that Trump is now taking a wrecking ball to.

The contrast could not be starker.

FDR was a man who assured us, “We have nothing to fear but fear itself.”

Donald  Trump does nothing but weaponize fear.

A few weeks ago was my mother Betty’s yartzeit. 18 years. My mother has now been gone the length of my entire childhood. Those first 18 years seemed like an eternity as I was growing up.

A lifetime, in fact.

Yet now 18 years seems to have passed in a flash. It could be 8 years, or sometimes it feels like 18 months.

Grief time doesn’t follow physics.

Eighteen years ago this summer, a few months after she died, I created a special memorial for my mother on her Bastille Day birthday.

An eternal memorial garden.  And now, with her 100th birthday coming up, a new poignancy is added. That garden is gone.

As it seems to happen daily, images of my former home pop up in social media memories. This week, the image of a rose-covered arbor brings with it a deep association with my mother.

For 2 decades, every Sunday in the spring and summer, my parents drove 30 minutes from my childhood home in West Hempstead, where they still lived, to spend the day with me in my gardens.

With every visit to my home, my mother’s face would light up as she walked through that arbor that led to my patio and verdant back property. Leaning on her metal walker with the iridescent green tennis balls adorning the legs, she would break out into a deep smile, her blue eyes wide with child-like wonder as she surveyed the lushness in front of her and exclaim: “It’s a Mechaye!” ( Yiddish for joy, extreme pleasure.)

By the simple act of walking through that perfumed rose and honeysuckle arbor, enveloped by beauty, her stress would melt, her physical pains seemingly disappear, and she would be at peace. Nothing gave me more pleasure than giving this to my mother.

Urban Dreams

When I lived in a penthouse in the city, I had a large terrace and filled it with dozens and dozens of containers, planters, and window boxes filled with shrubs, roses, and flowering perennials that I tended with great care. My mother delighted in sitting in this urban garden. When I moved to Huntington,  I knew I couldn’t leave my plants behind, so my mother hired a special truck to transport them to my new home.

How My Garden Grows

On the early September day in 2001, when I moved to Long Island from the city, my parents were at my new house to greet Hersh and me. When the truck arrived with my many urban plants, what had seemed like such a large garden on my penthouse terrace was suddenly so small in comparison to the acres of land they now rested on.

In time, they dug in their roots just as I would.

We all looked around at the vast bareness as we set up a table outside on the dirt to share the first meal, which my mother brought for us.  There was no brick patio, gunite pool, no fences, no shrubs, no plants, no lawn, just some overgrown weeds. Everyone saw a vacant lot, but in my mind, it was a blank canvas, a place for me to create. I shared my visions with my mother as we ate, and as with every other art endeavor, I did, she was enthusiastic

I would nurture and care for the plants and the land in the ways my mother always took care of me.

Garden Memorial 

The summer after my mother died, I held a memorial celebration of her life at my home on her birthday. I asked each friend and family member who attended to bring a plant that I would plant in her honor.

She would live on forever in my garden.

That afternoon, we gathered in a large circle in my back lawn, the 60 or more plants sitting in the center. At the very end of the service, we went around the circle, and each person shouted out in their distinctive voice: “It’s a  Mechaye”

The following week, I set about planting all the new flora, relying on my skills as a collage artist to find the proper place in my already overfilled garden. My hope had been that these plants would grow and watch over me, as I watched over them- my mother’s presence always felt.

A living, ever-growing testament to her love.

When I lost the house a few years ago, it broke my heart, leaving this part of the garden, but it felt like her spirit would always be there to keep an eye on my garden and to live on.

Now the Betty Edelstein garden is destroyed, along with everything else I created on that land. In some ways, this cuts the deepest.

Today, along with all the landscape, there is no longer any arbor to walk through. That, too, was removed by the new owners. My land is no longer a Mechaya!

Grief Miracles

But then there are grief miracles.

Something I have learned to look for.

My mother made her presence known as I was writing this piece.

On Sunday morning, as I looked out my office window, I noticed morning glories creeping up the side of my house, entwining the entrance to my office. These trumpet-shaped flowers had not been there the day before and were making their first appearance at this address.  They must have been stowaways from my former home, refugee seeds sneaking in on any number of clay pots filled with plant life that I brought with me. They lay dormant for the past year.  But seeing these old friends reminded me of my mother.

I spoke to my mother every morning, and in the spring and summer, I would sit out on my upstairs balcony to chat on the phone with her while watching the morning glories appear. The morning cheer of these flowers climbing the trellis echoed the joy of speaking to my mother.

It’s been 18 years since I could pick up the phone to speak to my mother, something I took for granted those first 18 years, when more often than not it was a phone call to pick me up from school. I miss her sweet, gentle voice with the subtle New York accent, though I have been told I only have to listen to my own distinctive voice to hear hers.

But I channel her words in my mind every day.

For 18 years, she was always there when I stumbled. And for decades after that.

In these 18 years, I have stumbled, often, but the encouragement and love my mother gave me every single day helped me up again.

She still does.

My Mother’s love grew in my Garden. Today was tangible proof that it continues to bloom.

Today, remembering my mother is a mechaye.

Kennedy Campaign Worker in tears 1968

Robert F. Kennedy represented hope.

But on June 6, 1968, a nation was left once more to watch and grieve and wonder after another senseless act of violence robbed us of that hope.

The GE alarm clock in my bedroom set to get me up in time to catch the school bus didn’t go off, as usual, that morning of June 5th, 1968.

Instead, my mother came into my bedroom and sat on the edge of my bed. She woke me and softly said: “Sally, darling, your friend Bobby Kennedy has been shot.”

There was an odd symmetry. It had been I, only five years earlier who had raced home from grade school to breathlessly announce to my mother that John Kennedy had been shot. Now, it was she telling me as I headed to school that another Kennedy had been assassinated.

I was in disbelief, as the elated sense of hope that had been Bobby suddenly drained away.

June 5, 1968, Robert Kennedy and his wife Ethel after his acceptance speech winning the California Primary.

Only the night before, hope beamed in black in white as I had watched the last day of the California presidential primary which had seemed a certain win for Kennedy.

I had gone to sleep certain of his victory.

I never met Robert Kennedy but I was always grateful that I get a chance to volunteer on his campaign. In the tumultuous spring of 1968, Bobby Kennedy beckoned the youth of America to join him in his presidential fight.

Mobilized and energized with the earnestness of a 13-year-old I responded.

Hand made poster RFK

Every day after school that spring, my best friend Karen and I rode our Schwinn bicycles to the local Robert Kennedy for President headquarters where we volunteered. Located in an abandoned suburban storefront, I would spend my afternoons and weekends stuffing envelopes making phone calls, and doing whatever grunt work was needed to help ensure that Bobby would be the 1968 Democratic candidate.

Bobby was all about hope.

That morning of June 5,  I awoke shattered.

Unlike John Kennedy or Martin Luther King, Bobby didn’t die immediately. He lingered for 24 hours.

On that long day, it felt as though being in a nightmare we couldn’t wake from. For over 24 hours we were in limbo. Hope was in limbo,

Throughout the day his press secretary Frank Mankiewicz updated the media on his condition at times sounding encouraging saying “his life signs remain good.” We hung on to every report with bated breath as he underwent a 4-hour surgery. He was breathing on his own we were told.

Hope returned.

Later in the day, hope began to dim, as the reports were more discouraging. At 10 pm President Lyndon Johnson went on television telling Americans he was “as shocked, shocked and dismayed as you are” and announced a commission to study “the causes and prevention of violence.”

I went to sleep knowing hope was in critical condition.

55 years later it still is.

Vintage ad NY Times July 1969

The following year when I was 14, I saw a startling full-page ad that ran in the New York Times in July of 1969. It was now one year after the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy, and 6 years after the shooting of President John Kennedy. Under photos of my fallen heroes the powerful headline  read:

” Hold onto this page for 1 year and hope and pray it’s ended.”

“The trouble is hoping and praying isn’t enough. Violence won’t end unless you’re willing to start the ending.”

I had saved it all these years, and clearly, the violence hadn’t ended. It had escalated. Half a century later it was time to use this aging piece of paper.

As the Featured artist “Ending Gun Violence- It’s About Time-Hope and Prayers Arent Enough” will be part of the exhibit “Absurdity In Dada We Trust” at The Art Center Highland Park, Illinois, on June 23-August 5, 2023.

I created “Ending Gun Violence -Its About Time-Hope and Prayers Arent Enough”

Surrounding the ad on the canvas, I had handwritten all the hundreds of mass shootings since that newspaper advertisement ran. When I made this piece in 2019 more than 400 people had been shot in over 230 school shootings. It would now take more than one canvas to fill the number that has happened since I created this.

The violence continues.

But the hope only diminishes.

Click Below to watch Video of the story behind that vintage ad

Click to Watch  https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ds51g2JFoRR0vd-ZrC2GlTk-RPfDbZEe/view?usp=drive_link

I was four years old in 1959, when I first dressed up as Marilyn Monroe, and it would follow me to my freshman year at Syracuse University, where I regularly roamed the halls of my dorm, decked out as the blonde bombshell.

Not for a party. Not for an event.

For no other reason than it was what I always enjoyed doing.

I was just me being me.

Being Marilyn.

From the moment I saw an incandescent Marilyn Monroe on the big screen in Some Like it Hot at the tender age of 3 ½, my mother Betty, knew her little girl had a special affinity for Marilyn. One that would last a lifetime. Always keen to my interests, Mom was the first to purchase a platinum blonde wig for me, just as she would eagerly buy a brown mustache for my alter ego, Pierre, the Parisienne artist.

Pierre, it seems, liked to cross-dress.

As a pre-schooler, I could often be found sashaying around the house dressed up like the blonde bombshell. Donning a platinum blonde wig and clumsily applying my mother’s Revlon Cherries in the Snow red lipstick, I would stuff my stretchy Danskin tops with balled-up anklet socks to try to recreate the same sexy allure.

In a world without iPhones, few pictures exist to document this part of my life, yet it remains vivid forever.

In the winter of 1959, my parents took me to my first theatrical movie, Some Like It Hot. Seeing Marilyn Monroe, larger than life, a luminous creature undulating on the screen in the dark, was unlike anything I had ever seen.

Marilyn Monroe was the very first movie star I ever saw on the big screen, and her image has been imprinted in my heart and soul for 68 years.  The movie was filmed in black and white, though Marilyn made everything Technicolor.

I was not quite 4 years old, and I had never been to the movies before. A pioneering member of the TV generation, I was content to see my moving images on a small Philco TV set.

Why my parents chose to introduce their little girl to the wonders of cinema with a cross-dressing screwball adult comedy instead of Snow White, I’ll never know.

But I know I would be eternally grateful. I was hooked for life.  Even as a child, I was pulled in by the complexity of her glamour and profound vulnerability and frailty.

Sally Edelstein, L) a 70’s selfie in my bedroom with the walls covered with Marilyn pictures. (R) Jr High Marilyn

My fascination with Marilyn didn’t end in my early childhood.

The walls in my teenage suburban bedroom were filled not with posters of rock bands but with my own rock stars. Marilyn Monroe and Bobby Kennedy. As I struggled with my own emotional challenges and complexities, she became a symbol of resiliency.

Alone in my room, hours were spent playing her albums – yes, there were Marilyn Monroe Record Albums- filled with songs she sang in her films, practicing in front of the mirror until I got her pitch and cadence down perfectly. When friends came over in high school, I would slip on a Seven Year Itch style white halter dress and wig, put the album on the portable record player, and lip sync to perfection. My repertoire ran the gamut  from  “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend to “I’m Through With Love.”

A set up selfie looking in my Clairol Make Up Mirror 1971

I cared little for makeup on my own. In Junior High, you’d be hard-pressed to find a Yardley Slicker lipstick among my belongings. But I’d stare into my Clairol True to Light makeup mirror, attempting to get the Marilyn Maybeline eyeliner just right.

Marilyn Makes the Scene at Syracuse

Sally Edelstein at Syracuse University in 1973, with friend and makeup artist Peter Brown. The sight of me walking the dorm halls decked out as Marilyn became a common site.

Packing for college was a no-brainer. Along with my regulation polyester  Huckapoo shirts and Landlubber bell bottoms, I had packed several wigs and outfits, including a vintage gold lame dress and matching 1950s gold lame spike heels.

The first week of school at Syracuse University in 1973 was overwhelming.

Nerves and insecurities were kicking into high gear as we unpacked our familiar belongings in this new, unfamiliar place. As Pioneer stereo systems were being set up in dorm rooms, the recognizable sounds of “Smoke on the Water” and “Shambhala” could be heard blaring through the dorm halls day and night, bonding the students.

My new roommate poked through my meager record collection, disappointed at not finding at least one Allman Brothers album.

While other kids my age were unpacking their albums that invariably included Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon and Deep Purple’s Who Do We Think We Are, my collection of vinyl consisted of Judy Garland at Carnegie Hall, The Best of Barbara Streisand, and several Marilyn Monroe Albums, including the soundtrack to Some Like It Hot.

My roommate eyed me warily. Was she rooming with a gay man?

Yes, while others my age went to the dark side of the moon with Pink Floyd, I was happy to be sitting in the darkened room lit up with the light that was Marilyn Monroe. It wasn’t long before the sight of an 18-year-old girl from Long Island dressed as Marilyn became just another day in the 70s.

Post Script

Happy Heavenly Birthday, Marilyn, 100 years old!

Marilyn never got old. Or fat. Norma Jean Baker would never need Botox or suffer a bad facelift because she never got wrinkles.

As though encased in amber, Marilyn Monroe is eternally 36.

Forever perfect.