Love in the Great Depression / The story of my grandparents

Love In The Depression from Ben Fractenberg on Vimeo.

I am alive. That statement is so self-apparent, banal. The fact that we exist seems almost inevitable. But when we think about the amazing set of circumstances that came into play for each of us to be around it becomes rather miraculous.

Here are the some of the things involved in my being born: the wholesale clothing business, rain, humorous letters, The University of Wisconsin and above all else - sound the choir - love. The kind of love that would lead a man to travel hundreds of miles during the height of the Great Depression to see a woman he met only a few days earlier.

That is the kind of love you find in movies. In novels written a hundred years ago. But it is also a true story. And it is something that engendered life when the rusted cogs of industry broke down and threatened to destroy our civilization.

This is the story of how my grandparents, Simon and Lena, met. Each was a child of Eastern European Jewish immigrants, both trying to succeed on their own terms while struggling against the constraints of ethnicity, class and gender.

It is reassuring to know that we are not the first people - and certainly won?t be the last - to deal with the complexity of relationships during the height of an economic crisis. That is why it?s so important to keep these stories alive. Because they show us how to live. Because we are not faded lights borne out of nothing. Because their story is our story.

Here is that story, as told by my mother, Susan Blacker, of how my grandparents met and fell in love.