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