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Mazel
Toy!
44
Lost
Connection
Persistence andIN article led to
reunion for siblings who never knew
of each other's existence.
Lastfag after exhausting all considered eon's in the search for
her husband's cousin, former Detroiter Dr. Arnold Jacobs,
New Yorker Diane Jacobs contacted Jewish News Staff Writer
Shelli Liebman Dorfman for help.
Within hours of the appearance of an article highlighting
known details of Dr. Jacobs and his Detroit roots, including
his grandparents Solomon and Annie Raskin, an extraordinary
reunion was under way.
"Your article, headlined 'Looking for Relatives ofJacobs,
Raskin,' was the key to a remarkable and heart-warming con-
nection between close family members who had never met and
until late in their lives, never knew each other existecZ" said
Dr. Jacobs' friend Arnold Hirsch of Birmingham.
`Arnold Jacobs has been a friend of mine since our teenage
years in Detroit, and we speak by phone several times a year"
Hirsch said. 'During one of those conversations a month or
two ago, he mentioned that he had just talked with his sister.
`Sister' I said 'what sister?' And then he told me the story
about his sister Beverly tracking him down after many, many
years."
Here is Dr. Arnold Jacobs' story.
DR ARNOLD M. JACOBS
Special to the Jewish News
I
never really knew my father. I knew that he and my
mother were married in New York City in 1930,
that they got divorced a few years later when I was
still a little boy and that my mother returned to her
hometown of Detroit, with me in hand.
Growing up in the Dexter-Elmhurst area, on Humphrey
Street, across from the small neighborhood synagogue
where I had my bar mitzvah, I didn't spend much time
thinking about my father. I couldn't even picture him in
my mind. I knew his name was Allen Jacobs and that his
family was in the soft-drink bottling business in New York
City.
As I went on to college and d medical school in the late
1950s and early '60s, my father was pretty much a vague
memory. I didn't even know if he was alive.
Last November, I found out. I have lived and practiced
medicine in Los Angeles for the past 25 years. T ast fall at a
medical convention, I ran into an old friend, Dr. Henry
Sonenshein, who still lives in the Detroit area. Henry
always likes to joke around so when he asked me if I knew
that somebody in New York was looking for me, I thought
he was setting me up for a punch line.
But he was serious. He brought out a clipping from the
Detroit Jewish News to prove it.
Someone from New York had contacted the newspaper
for help in locating an Arnold Martin Jacobs, believed to
be a physician born about 1932. The article gave details of
relatives' names and old addresses that I instantly recog-
nized. My God, I thought, it's me.
When I got back home, I sent a message to the e-mail
address in the article, saying: "I think I am the person you
are looking for." Almost instantly, I got a call from a warm,
friendly woman named Diane Jacobs, who said she was
married to my first cousin, Arthur. Luckily, I was sitting
- down. Who knew from cousins or any relatives on my
father's side? And why would they be trying to find me
after all these years?
But as we talked, it became clear this was legitimate. And
then came the real stunner: She told me I had a sister.
Diane said Beverly, my sister, had been trying to locate
me since 1989, the year her father — our father — died.
LOST CONNECTION on page 37
From the top:
Beverly Wagner of Long Island, NY, with
her brother Dr. Arnold Jacobs of Los Angeles.
Arnold Jacobs with his mother Thelma, in
front of their home in Detroit in 1937.
JN
4/18
2003
35