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High Holiday Mitzvah
Volunteers accompany seniors to cemeteries, but the experience lingers.
ROBERT A. SKLAR
Editor
%TN
9/17
2004
24
he's 95 now but the memory of her late
husband still burns brightly in the heart and
soul of Martha Hencken. The West
Bloomfield resident doesn't often get to visit his
gravesite at Hebrew Memorial Park in Clinton
Township.
She got to visit it on Sunday morning, Sept. 12,
as part of Kever Avot, an annual communal event
of Temple Israel and Ira Kaufman Chapel. The
event helps seniors recite Kaddish at the gravesides
of family and friends during the High Holiday
season. This year, 113 Temple Israel volunteers
assisted 62 Jewish seniors picked up by bus at nine
assisted care and independent living complexes.
Eleven cemeteries were visited.
"Often, seniors lack the means or ability to get
to the cemeteries at this time of the year, when we
traditionally remember our loved ones who have
passed away," said David Techner of Southfield's
Kaufman Chapel. "Kever Avot provides the neces-
sary combination of resources to Jewish seniors in .
the community to reflect on the past while creat-
ing new memories."
Martha Hencken is the mother of two, grand-
mother of four and great-grandma of nine. She
called Kever Avot, Hebrew for Graves of Our
Ancestors, "a wonderful project."
"It's special and convenient," she said. "I went
last year, too."
Bernard "Ben" Hencken was her second hus-
band. He was a pharmacist who ran Don's Drugs,
a Detroit landmark on West Seven Mile for many
years.
She and Ben were married 15 years at the time
he died at age 95 in 2002. She described him as
remarkable: "a gentleman and a gentle person, in
every way.
Martha moved to the Lillian and Samuel
Hechtman Apartments on the Eugene and Marcia
Applebaum Jewish Community Campus so she
could visit Ben every day during his final two
years. He was living then at the nearby Marvin
and Betty Danto Family Health Care Center.
In a dvar Torah for the volunteers, Rabbi Harold
Loss of Temple Israel talked about how a feeling of
family permeates Kever Avot. "It's often the begin-
ning of new relationships that last throughout the
year," he said.
Martha called her volunteer chaperone, Debbie
Frommer of West Bloomfield, "a lovely lady who
helped me also find the graves of Ben's daughter,
Joan Kalen, and Joan's daughter, Andrea.
"I want her to come to Hechtman to visit me."
Frommer expects to do just that.
"She opened her heart to me and wanted me to
be a part of her life. I'll definitely go see her,"
Frommer said. "She's just amazing. At 95, she
talks about going over to Danto to help the elderly
who can't help themselves."
Frommer has worked Kever Avot for three years.