No master list of numbers and corresponding names has ever been found; Jo Johnson, for one, doesn’t believe such a list exists. But the earliest death certificates lead her to believe that one was intended. On those, someone took the time to record the burial marker number. But after the first five hundred or so, the notations stopped. Jo and her husband Ernie tried to reconstruct a complete list, figuring that if they put the deaths into chronological order, they could match the numbers to the names on the death certificates.
A logical idea, but it turned out that chronology didn’t dictate the order of burials, especially in the winter months. After the ground froze, Martine says, the Eloise grave-diggers would put the coffins into the icehouse to await a break in the weather or the spring thaw. When the grave-diggers went back to work, they understandably put efficiency at the top of their list of concerns, and for all anyone knows, never thought about chronology at all. So there’s no way, with any degree of certainty, to match the names, the dates, and the numbers.
Not that many people are asking. After all, these Eloise patients are buried here because no one came forward to claim them at the time of their deaths. Martine and I tromp from one end of the clearing to the other, looking for more numbers in the ground, but we see only deer tracks. I remember a photograph I had seen, with the caption “Eloise Cemetery, 1948,” that shows two rows of freshly dug graves, perhaps thirty graves in all, with a neat line of markers jutting one to two feet above ground. But over the years, the cement blocks sank in the sandy soil, so most have disappeared below the surface, leaving only a few visible to unprepared visitors who come with neither trowel nor shovel.
Martine reminisces about her last visit the previous summer. She went with her son, a college student, and he was so taken by what he saw that he later wrote a poem for the Resurrected Voices project. “It was a stunning day, and the field was alive with goldfinches, wildflowers, and blackberries,” she says. “I stood there and thought to myself, if you have to be buried somewhere, it’s not a bad place to spend eternity.”
We stand there silently for a few moments, the wind blowing steadily against us. It’s been nearly sixty years since the last burial there. It’s quiet, with not a soul in sight; the sixteen-degree temperature and colder wind have permeated our coats, and I suggest that a warm car would feel good.
As we walk back, I think about the growing movement to reclaim the forgotten Jewish cemeteries in Eastern Europe, to treat them as sacred ground and honor the dead buried there, even if there are no Jews living nearby and no family members to tend the graves. Shouldn’t the dead at Eloise be treated the same way? Shouldn’t the Eloise cemetery have a fence around it and a sign announcing what’s here?
“I thought so, at first,” Martine says. “I thought it was a crime that it wasn’t marked.” But we both agree that honoring the Eloise dead isn’t as simple as it seems. Abandoned mental hospitals have a history of attracting the curious, and worse. Unless Wayne County is willing to spend money for security or a caretaker, putting a sign on the road or the outside gate might lead to more harm than honor. I suggest that the trees provide a natural shield, and that the county or the state could erect a memorial on the site, or a historical marker, without much fear of causing problems. The irony occurs to both of us: We’ve fallen into a line of thinking that would keep the cemetery hidden.
We turn around to take a last, lingering look. “So much about these people’s lives is hidden, and that history should be told,” Martine says. “But maybe the cemetery itself should stay the way it is. It’s peaceful, and those buried here didn’t have much of that.”
I think about Annie and her grave in Section 19, Row J at Hebrew Memorial Park. She, too, is identified by number rather than name, but at least we know for certain that number 19 is her site, her grave, her final resting place. The Eloise dead don’t have that. Whatever else Mom did, at least she saved Annie from the fate of permanent obscurity in a cemetery that, like the ghostly Brigadoon, exists more in memory than in name.
Not wanting to leave any stone unturned, I arrive at the Detroit Jewish News offices in suburban Detroit to confirm the obvious: that there was no death notice for Annie in August 1972. I load the microfilm into the reader and scroll through the weekly paper’s pages to the issue for August 11.
Yet there she is.
“Annie Cohen, 3378 Richton, died Aug. 7. Survived by one sister.”
I’m shocked. Here, in black and white, is the secret. Why would Mom…
But wait. No, the secret is intact. Mom’s name isn’t mentioned, and neither is Annie’s true residence. Instead, the notice implies that Annie Cohen, whoever she is, lived out her days on Richton, an address she never knew, on a street she never visited, in an apartment where she never slept or ate or brushed her teeth, at a place she never called home. (Nor did my grandparents, who lived at 3710 Richton, not 3378.)
I look at the other death notices. One catches my eye: “Sanford Bruss, of 30536 Southfield…leaves his parents, Mr. and Mrs. Kalman Bruss; a brother, Joel; a sister, Janice; and his grandmother, Mrs. Anna Kass.”
A sister, Janice.
Mom must have asked Hebrew Memorial to omit her name. It’s the only explanation for why it doesn’t follow the form of the others.
Their roles had reversed, preserving the secret: Annie, identified, and Mom, anonymous.
One final stone to turn, this one real rather than metaphoric:
On a blustery April day in 2008, with the grass spongy from the retreat of a recent snow and the buds just beginning to show on the otherwise bare trees, Mary Jo and I approach Annie’s grave at Hebrew Memorial Park. The cemetery put the headstone in place a few months ago, and now we have come together to see the memorial for ourselves. Snow flurries had greeted us as we climbed into the car for the long ride over, but now the sun has elbowed its way through the gray skies, the promise of spring replacing the dying wisps of winter.
When I first proposed the idea of a headstone to my siblings, we discussed what words to chisel into the stone. It was important, we all agreed, that the words be true, that they didn’t suggest emotions that weren’t felt or expressed during Annie’s lifetime. Mary Jo and I gaze now at the words we chose:
ANNIE COHEN
APRIL 27, 1919 –AUGUST 7, 1972
DAUGHTER, SISTER, AUNT
Simple words that restore in death—for as long as this headstone lasts, anyway—the identities that Annie lost in life.
And the secret? It is now free, free to fade into the past, and into memory.
{ FAMILY MEMBERS AND RECURRING FIGURES }
PRIMARY FIGURES
Beth (maiden name Cohen) Luxenberg, daughter of Hyman and Tillie Cohen (born 1917 in Detroit, died 1999)
Annie Cohen, hidden younger sister of Beth (born 1919 in Detroit, died 1972)
Steve Luxenberg, son of Beth and Jack Luxenberg; narrator of the story (born 1952)
RELATIVES
The Schlein and Cohen families (Detroit and Radziwillow, Russia/Ukraine)
Hyman Cohen (Chaim Korn), Beth and Annie’s father, junk peddler and immigrant from Radziwillow (arrived in the United States 1907, died 1964)
Tillie (Schlein) Cohen, Beth and Annie’s mother, immigrant from Radziwillow (arrived in the United States about 1914, died 1966)
Anna (Schlajn/Schlein) Oliwek, Beth’s cousin; a Holocaust survivor from Radziwillow who met the Cohen family after 1949, the year of Anna’s arrival in the United States (born 1923)
Nathan Shlien, Anna’s uncle and a boarder with the Cohens in 1930, before Annie became a secret (born 1894, deceased)
Bella and David Oliwek, Anna’s daughter and son, who as children accompanied their mother on a few trips to Eloise; Dori Oliwek, their younger sister
The Luxenberg family (Detroit; Syracuse, New York; and Lomza province, Russia/Poland)
Julius Luxenberg, known as Jack, Beth’s husband, son of Harry and Ida Luxenberg (born in Lomza 1913, arrived in the United States 1920,
died 1980)
Harry Luxenberg, Jack’s father, a baker and immigrant from Lomza (arrived 1913, deceased)
Ida Luxenberg, Jack’s mother, immigrant from Lomza (arrived 1920, deceased)
Manny Luxenberg, Jack’s younger brother (born 1921)
Rose (Luxenberg) Boskin, Jack’s sister (born 1925)
Bill Luxenberg, Jack’s youngest brother (born 1929)
Evie (Luxenberg) Miller, Steve’s eldest sister, Jack’s daughter from a first marriage (born 1937)
Marsha (Luxenberg) Rosenberg, known as Sash or Sashie, Steve’s older sister and Jack’s daughter from a first marriage (born 1940)
Michael Luxenberg, son of Beth and Jack, Steve’s older brother (born 1945)
Jeffery Luxenberg, son of Beth and Jack, Steve’s younger brother (born 1956)
OTHER SIGNIFICANT OR RECURRING FIGURES
At Botsford Hospital (general hospital in Farmington, Michigan, where Beth was treated)
Time frame: 1995–1999
Toby Hazan, Beth’s psychiatrist
Mary Bernek, psychiatric social worker
Rozanne Sedler, social worker for Jewish Family Service (not associated with Botsford)
At Harper Hospital (general hospital where Annie went for medical care)
Time frame: 1937–1940
Frederick Kidner, noted orthopedic surgeon who decided to amputate Annie’s leg
Stephen Bohn, neurologist who suggested that Annie’s family institutionalize her
Jean Powell, social worker who first dealt with the Cohen family in the mid-1930s
At Wayne County Probate Court
Time frame: 1940
Patrick O’Brien, Wayne County Probate Court judge who approved Annie’s commitment to Eloise in April 1940
Benjamin W. Clark, Howard Peirce, and Peter E. Bolewicki, physicians assigned by O’Brien to examine Annie and offer an opinion on her sanity
At Eloise Hospital (county institution where Annie lived, Wayne County, Michigan)
Time frame: 1940–present
Mona Evans, social worker and author of a lengthy report on Annie (“Routine History”) after her admission to Eloise in 1940
Thomas K. Gruber, superintendent, 1929–1948
Edward Missavage, staff psychiatrist for nearly thirty years and former director, male psychiatric division
Jo Johnson, coordinator, Friends of Eloise; chairman, Westland Historical Commission
Martine MacDonald, artist and co-originator of “Resurrected Voices: The Eloise Cemetery Project”
Beth’s friends and neighbors
Time frame: 1930s–1942
Faye (Levin) Emmer, a close friend who appears in many of Beth’s photos from the 1940s (deceased)
Sylvia (Robinson) Pierce and Irene (Robinson) Doren, sisters who lived next door to the Cohen family on Euclid (both deceased)
Millie (Moss) Brodie, a cousin of Sylvia and Irene, visitor to Beth’s neighborhood
Martin Moss, known as Marty; Millie’s brother and Beth’s friend
Julie Reisner (Norton), friend of Beth, Sylvia, Irene, and Faye
Time frame: 1942–1950
Fran (Rumpa) Donofsky, Beth’s close friend during World War II who later married Jack Luxenberg’s cousin, Hy Donofsky
Medji Grobeson, sister of Jack’s first wife, Esther; babysitter used by Beth in the mid-to late 1940s
Time frame: 1950–1999
Ethel Edelman, member of Beth’s bridge group and Beth’s closest friend from her days on Houghton and Fargo in Detroit (deceased)
Ann Black, bridge game partner
Marilyn Frumkin, bridge game partner and wife of Sid Frumkin, Beth’s long-time boss (both deceased)
Fred Garfinkel, Beth’s coworker and boss
Natalie Edelman, Ethel’s daughter
{ AUTHOR’S NOTE }
Nonfiction writers face many choices in assembling their accumulated facts and interviews into a cohesive narrative. Here are mine: I have chosen not to reconstruct long-ago events as if I were there; any quotes or dialogue come from documents or from interviews with people who were there. I have used italics to set off those parts of the book that reflect my memories, and I have used quotation rarely and then only when I have some specific recollection of the words that might have been said.
Similarly, I have generally adhered to chronology in describing my effort to discover my mother’s reasons for keeping her secret, so that the detective story unfolds as it happened. But reporting a sprawling story like this one cannot be accomplished in a neat, sequential order. I pursued multiple lines of inquiries simultaneously, and they bore fruit in a haphazard fashion, so I occasionally break from the chronology to provide clarifying information that I learned later in the reporting process, but which I could have gained at any time (for example, facts about prosthetic legs). At no time do I alter the time line of my understanding about the secret.
A few words about language and labels: Descriptions of mental illness have changed frequently and dramatically in the past hundred years, almost always for the better. To show that evolution and for the sake of historical accuracy, I have chosen to stick with the language of the time. An example: Michigan and other states had institutions for the “feeble-minded” during the first half of the twentieth century and even beyond, so when I refer to those institutions and that time period, I use the same term.
I hope this offends no one; it is merely part of the story I am trying to tell—the story of a family secret, its origins, and the thinking that led to thousands of hidden relatives in America.
Steve Luxenberg
Baltimore, Maryland
February 2009
{ NOTES }
From the outset, I envisioned Annie’s Ghosts as part history, part journalism, and part memoir. I spoke with more than 150 people in the course of my detective work, and followed the secret where it led. That route went through archives, libraries, museums, courthouses, and government offices. Often, the narrative itself makes reference to the sources of my material; these chapter notes provide more detailed information on my reporting and research.
PROLOGUE: Spring 1995
suffering from anxiety attacks… My real-time account of my mother’s hospitalization comes from other people’s memories as well as my own. Later, for the book, I obtained her medical records, which I had legal permission to see.
ONE: Spring 2000
It’s known as the Patient Protection Act… That isn’t the official name. The legislature approved a new “Mental Health Code” (Act 258 of 1974) in the midst of the national movement to provide more legal and medical safeguards for psychiatric patients, which may explain why my contact called it the Patient Protection Act.
TWO: Looking for Mom
George Eastman’s little Brownie… The evolution of amateur photography in the early twentieth century is a fascinating story of technological achievement, as revolutionary in that age as the digital camera has been in ours. Several histories have chronicled the innovative feats of both Kodak and its founder, George Eastman, including Douglas Collins’s 1990 volume, The Story of Kodak (New York: H.N. Abrams).
Mom’s obituary for the local newspapers…Detroit Free Press, M. L. Elrick, “Beth Luxenberg: Work, debate were her passions,” Sept. 3, 1999, p. 5B. Detroit News, “Beth Luxenberg: Did accounting work for 35 years,” p. 2C.
the sixty or so people who had gathered… That’s the number who signed the guest book at the funeral.
THREE: The Rosetta Stone
the “Routine History” completed by an Eloise social worker… Eloise opened its social work department in 1923; by 1940, the sort of detailed report written by Mona Evans had become standard practice. The history was an important part of the patient’s record, and the psychiatrist assigned to Annie’s case would have relied upon it.
just plain heavy, up to eighteen pounds… Kevin Carroll, an executive at Hanger Prosthetics, gave me an education on artificial limbs; I relied on his knowledge here and in
Chapter 13.
I consulted a former director of Michigan’s mental health department… The former director, Frank Ochberg, served in that job from 1979 to 1981.
Detroit city directories… Published by R. L. Polk, a Detroit company, these compilations of names, residential addresses, businesses, and charitable organizations provide invaluable snapshots of American cities.
I also don’t see my grandparents’ name… The entire 1930 census is available online through ancestry.com, a fee-based service. Most public and university libraries, as well as the National Archives, have subscriptions to a library edition and offer free access. The ancestry.com database can be searched in multiple ways, a much easier method of locating people than peering at the Archives’ microfilm, so I was mystified when I couldn’t find my grandparents’ listing initially. Once I saw the enumerator’s “Hyman Hyman” goof, I understood why.
I peer through this window into the past… My grandparents’ listing appears on sheet 3B, Enumeration District 82–131 of the 1930 Census.
Nathan Shlien, boarder… Nathan’s last name appears as Shlien, Shlein, and Schlien on various records. Shlien is the most frequent, so I have used that spelling.
FOUR: Unlocking the Door
the muffled voices… I wondered whether Medji was remembering the scene accurately. Why, for example, would Mom and her parents leave the door ajar? But this is Medji’s memory, and I found myself trusting it. She didn’t have an answer to all my questions, and she willingly said, “I don’t remember” when I asked for more detail.
even after the divorce… Esther filed for divorce on May 11, 1942; it was granted on August 13, 1942. Docket 328570, Wayne County Circuit Court.
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