My, What Nice

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Some of the Bodzin clan. In front are
(from left) Alison Vodnoy of Indiana,
Chezky Blitz of Southfield and Eliyahu
Rothstein of Oak Park.

The reunion allowed everybody to
shmooze. Here, (standing, from left)
Tanya, Linda, Jen and Bob Bodzin talk
to Lonnie and Barbara Bodzin.

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A true feat: Ben Seligson of New York sets up a Bodzin family photograph at Camp Tamarack last Sunday

SUSAN TAWIL

Special to The Jewish News

E

leven year old Jerusalemite
Hadass Amster enfolded a
relative in a bear hug. "I love
you!" she cried in her thick
Israeli accent. "Who are you?"
Not an atypical conversation at the
Bodzin Family Club 50th Reunion last
weekend. Held Sunday at Camp
Tamarack, with a concluding brunch
Monday at Cherna and Eugene
Kowalsky's Southfield home, nearly
150 "cousins" came together to cele-
brate the motto emblazoned on their
reunion T-shirts, caps, water bottles
and pens: "It's Great to be a Bodzin!"
According to Joel Bodzin, current
president of the Bodzin Family Club,
the cousins club was founded in 1947
in memory of "Uncle" Henry Bodzin, a
World War II pilot shot down over
Germany. Every month since then,
family members have held official meet-
ings, complete with minutes, in various
homes in the metro Detroit area.

9/11

1998

56 Detroit Jewish News

The children perform a skit, with
Shoshana Bell acting as emcee and Moshe
Bell playing the role of "Cutie Pie."

In the months leading up to Labor
Bodzin and Joseph Perecman,- featured
Day weekend, cousins Cherna Kowal-
family "elders" reminiscing about life
sky, Sharon Cohen and Chaya Leah
with "Bubby and Zayde," memories
Rothstein kept busy phoning, shop-
such as their mother rising at 5 a.m.
ping, preparing food and assembling
on Fridays to knead challah dough,
reunion kits. A reunion Website
making little apple pastries with the
helped to organize the
leftover dough for the chil-
event.
dren's breakfast; their
"It was a labor of
father always with
love," Cohen said.
an open volume of
"It brought us
Talmud, supple-
closer. There were
menting his mea-
no fights, no
ger shochet's
stress."
income by tutoring
Moshe Chaim
the milkman's sons
Bodziner, progen
in exchange for
itor of the
milk for the fami-
Frayda Bell, 1, doesn't yet realize how
Bodzin clan, left
ly; the penny a
wide and deep her firmily tree grows. She
Poland in 1921,
is held here by her grandmother; Cherna week the children
settling in
would get from
Bodzin Kotvalsky, a reunion organizer.
Detroit in 1935.
their father for
Working as a
helping around
shochet (ritual slaughterer), he and
the house; sister Yetta graduating from
his wife, Chaya Leah, raised five
college on scholarship and buying a
boys and five girls.
car to help her father deliver the
A special video shown at the
slaughtered chickens.
reunion, produced by cousins Pearlena
Now into the fifth generation, the

family numbers over 200, making the
Bodzins one of the largest extended
Jewish families in the Detroit area.
Toting a laptop, Marty Bodzin of
Ohio worked on an extensive family
tree. Barbara Bodzin, a Southfield
computer programmer, has also been
working on a family tree, which is
now 16 pages long. At the reunion,
they hoped to add their data and
merge their research together.
At Tamarack, along with swim-
ming, baseball and a barbecue, some
of the 60 or so children presented a
musical skit about their grandparents
growing up. A Chinese auction offered
such goods as Aunt Yetta's hand-knit
afghan, ceramics crafted by cousin
Lionel, jewelry made from Israeli
stamps by cousin Robert, and uncle
Leon's beautiful photos of Jerusalem.
On Monday, Aunt Marian Duchan
was feted with cake and song to cele-
brate her 80th birthday. Remarked
cousin Dianne Bodzin from Morton
Grove, Ill.: "The Bodzins have awe-
some genes — everyone gets along!" ❑

