By Maude I. Salinger:
Adele Salinger (née Deutsch) was born into a Hungarian-Jewish immigrant household in Cleveland on August 29, 1929, the youngest of six children. Her father, Joseph, was a doctor; her mother, Szuzie, a homemaker who kept a kosher household. Adele readily recalled many fond and vivid memories of her childhood. She remembered walking with her mother to the kosher butcher shop on Fridays to pick out a live chicken for the Sabbath meal. In addition to roast chicken, Szuzie made delicious chicken soup and stuffed cabbage for Shabbat. Joseph brought home the challah and desert from a baker near his office on his way home. Adele’s grandfather (Joseph’s father) was a cantor and rabbi in one of the largest Hungarian congregations in the city. Adele remembered his beautiful voice and the visits to her grandparent’s home with her father for meals after temple on Saturday.
On Sundays in the summer, the family would drive to the shore of Lake Erie to picnic and swim. Adele and her mother were baseball fans, and Adele remembers taking the trolley with friends to watch the Cleveland Indians, her “home” team.
Adele was athletic and strikingly beautiful with long, dark hair. She was an outgoing and popular teenager, performing in and helping produce high school plays. (Adele’s older sister, Bea, may have once dated Paul Newman, who attended the same high school and was also performing in school plays.) After she graduated from high school, Adele lived at home and attended Case Western Reserve, majoring in English and theater.
One evening, when she came home after a rehearsal, she noticed her father in his usual chair with the Hungarian and Yiddish newspapers he was accustomed to reading lying open on his lap. She thought he was asleep, but when she tried to wake him he was unresponsive. Adele called her older brother, Frank, and the police, who transported her father to the hospital where he was pronounced dead. Her mother was traveling home from California at the time, after visiting Adele’s three older sisters who had moved there. Frank, her brother Irving, and Adele decided not to tell Szuzie the news until she had arrived home.
Although she rarely spoke of her father’s death, it had a profound impact on her life. Her mother decided to sell their house and join her three daughters in California. Adele, who had only one more year at Case Western, pleaded to be allowed to stay, but it was not an option. After moving to Oakland, she enrolled at UC Berkeley to finish her degree in English and drama. It was at Cal that she met and married Richard Salinger. After graduation, he was offered a job teaching science in Boston, so the two of them drove across the country to start married life in New England. Her oldest son, Noel, was born in Boston the following year. Richard was then offered a job as head of the science department at Wilton High School in Wilton, Connecticut, a position he held for nine years. Maude, Beryl, Seth, and Ross were all born in Connecticut. Occasionally, Adele worked as a substitute English teacher at the high school. She also was active in the Wilton Community Theater, performing in and directing several productions. She also wrote the script and lyrics for an original musical, “Just Take It From Me,” which was performed at the high school.
In 1963, the family moved to Champaign-Urbana Illinois, where Richard directed the school science-curriculum project for the University of Illinois. Darcy, the youngest, was born in Champaign in 1965. Adele had a wide circle of friends, and was instrumental in creating the Champaign-Urbana Community Theater. Once again, she performed in and directed several productions for the theater. She also began to pursue other artistic interests, and took a weekly oil painting class.
The entire family moved to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia in 1968 when Richard accepted a job with the Peace Corps, training volunteers how to teach science. Adele was active in the international community, and in addition to being busy with her family, she studied Chinese brush painting and directed plays for the international school. For several years, she taught English, speech, and drama at the school.
Adele and Richard separated while they were in Malaysia, and were divorced in 1978. After ten years in Malaysia, Adele moved to Superior, Wisconsin, to pursue a Master’s degree in English as a Second Language. Her youngest daughter, Darcy, was the only one at home at that time. Adele taught ESL at the English Language Center (ELC) and completed the coursework for her degree, but never finished her thesis. After the ELC closed down and Darcy began college, her other children became concerned about her isolation and persuaded her to move to Boston to be closer to them (Maude, Beryl, and Seth were all in the Boston area at that time). She lived in an apartment in Somerville, and eventually found work teaching ESL. Her sons and daughters married and had children during this time, and she enjoyed many visits with grandchildren.
However, after having lived in Malaysia for ten years, she was still interested in living overseas. After the breakup of the Soviet Union, the United States government, interested in establishing its influence in Eastern Europe, expanded the outreach of the Peace Corps to that region. Adele decided to apply to be a volunteer, and at the age of 60, was accepted into the first Peace Corps group to go to Hungary. Although Hungarian was spoken in her home while she was growing up, and she understood it, she never learned to speak it until she underwent language training with the rest of the volunteers.
Adele was stationed as an ESL teacher at Petofi Sandor Gymnasium in Bonyhad, about three hours southeast of Budapest. (Although Adele had had a large, extended family in Hungary before WWII, all but two of them perished in the Holocaust.) Adele extended her two-year service in Bonyhad by an additional year, returning to Boston at the age of 63. She found it difficult to look for work and housing after the Peace Corps; eventually, she was persuaded to move to East Longmeadow, closer to her older daughter, Beryl. Adele volunteered as an ESL teacher to Russian Jewish immigrants in the greater Springfield area for many years, lending her skills and expertise to Jewish Family Services. She moved to a subsidized senior housing complex, Brownstone Gardens III, several years ago and has been quite happy there. She was diagnosed with early-stage Alzheimer’s approximately seven years ago.
Adele enjoyed visits with her six children, their spouses, and her eleven grandchildren. Her grandchildren, from oldest to youngest are: Natasha, José, Gabrielle, Calla, Corrie, Auden, Paloma, Zachary, Graham, Collin, Dylan, and Miranda. Despite Alzheimer’s, she retained her sense of humor and cheerfulness, a keen interest in U.S.and world affairs (although her perception of current events was somewhat confused), and a love of painting. She also had a “green thumb”, and lovingly cared for numerous plants, many of which she started herself from cuttings.
In the last two years of her life, Adele resided at the Hebrew Senior Life Center in Dedham, Massachusetts. Although, by this time, she had lost the capacity for most speech, she was eloquent beyond words with her smile and her loving demeanor. She left this earth peacefully, in her sleep. Those who knew her in her final years always used the same word to describe her: "joyful." The last thing Adele did before she went to sleep last night for the last time was to laugh and sing.
זיכרונו לברכה
Zikhronah Livrakha
May her memory be for a blessing among all the mourners of Zion.
Posts
