28 | DECEMBER 21 • 2023
J
N
OUR COMMUNITY
H
arvey and Cynthia
Gersin, now a set of
great-grandparents
well in their 80s, love to
recall that even though it
was ahead of their time, she
called him first!
The two first met in
November 1955 at a
Thanksgiving Dance when
Harvey was 17 and Cynthia
was 15; they started talking
and exchanged phone
numbers. A few months
later, Cynthia called Harvey
to invite him to her Sweet 16.
“My girlfriends were going
to be there, and I needed a
bunch of boys, so I called
Harvey to invite him and
asked him to bring some
of his friends,” explained
Cynthia.
“And that was when I fell
in love,” Harvey said.
“No, you didn’t!” laughed
Cynthia. “The next summer,
I got a job a few hours away
and you and your friends
used to hitchhike up there to
visit me. That’s when I knew
you really liked me!”
“I really liked you at your
Sweet 16, too!” Harvey
insisted.
But there’s no doubt the
summers of 1956 and 1957
were a defining time in
their relationship. Cynthia
used to work at a camp
over 143 miles away and,
desperate to see her, Harvey
would hitchhike up to her
campgrounds.
“Hitchhiking was much
safer than it is now,” Harvey
explained. “We were ‘going
steady’ and fell more in love
during that time.”
Interestingly, they
had both grown up in
Dorchester, Massachusetts, a
city near Boston. At the time,
it was a Jewish enclave with
mostly Ashkenazi Jews from
Central Europe. Though
their families lived only five
blocks apart, they had only
met as teenagers.
“We even attended the
same temple,” added Harvey.
“Cynthia’s grandfather was
the president of an Orthodox
shul that my family went to
on Saturdays and the High
Holidays. My bar mitzvah
took place in that same
Dorchester synagogue. Little
did I know that my future
wife was up in the separated
women’s section watching.”
In 1957, they decided to
get married.
“Our engagement lasted
about a year and on June
29, 1958, we were married,”
remembered Harvey. “On
our wedding day, Cynthia
was 18 and I was 20. At that
time in Massachusetts, the
male had to be 21 to get a
marriage license. My father
signed for me to make it
legal.”
It wasn’t easy managing
a new marriage while still
students.
“We didn’t have much
money,” Harvey said. “We
lived in an attic apartment
that was so small you could
spread your arms and touch
both living room walls!”
In May 1960 — a month
before Harvey’s college
graduation — their first
child was born. That child is
now a mother of three grown
children and a grandmother
of two little girls. Over
time, Harvey and Cynthia
became parents to four,
grandparents to 10 (plus
their spouses!) and are now
great-grandparents to five.
In 1976, the family
moved to Michigan where
they became members of
Congregation B’nai Israel of
West Bloomfield. (“It’s on the
corner of our street!”)
“As the children grew,
‘Too Young to Get
a Marriage License!’
ROCHEL BURSTYN CONTRIBUTING WRITER
HOW WE MET
The happy couple on
their wedding day
Harvey and Cynthia
in 1956