Nothing I had experienced in a lifetime of reading people’s stories prepared me for the exhilaration I felt when I curled up on the sofa that evening and began to read what I later decided to call the manuscript, FAREWELL TO FEAR. Exhilaration began with the early statements about fear when I tried to recall what my own earliest recollections of fear were like, and it continued with the excitement rising as Bettina Kaff faced each problem she encountered with courage and tenacity. It was not until she was safely on board the Aquatania and on their way to America that I was able to breathe a sigh of relief. Then I experienced great satisfaction in having a little part in the unfolding of Ena’s marvelous story.
We worked together for months as 1994 turned into 1995. Shortly before this happened I had an occasion to be on the phone with Bob Glazier, editor of Springfield magazine about the stories I was working on and casually mentioned that I had the story of Ena Tarrasch. There was a silence on his end of the line. Then, in a voice hushed with a sort of reverence he said, “You have the story of Ena Tarrasch?”
Holding my breath, I replied “Yes”.
From Editor Glazier, “You mean THE Ena Tarrasch, the wife of Ernest Tarrasch, Doctor Ernest Tarrasch?”
It was not until that moment that I fully comprehended what I had in FAREWELL TO FEAR. I replied in the affirmative and Editor Glazier lost no time in arranging an appointment for us to come to his office to talk about Ena’s memoirs and doing a series in his magazine. Ena was elated at the prospect of being published, but totally unprepared for the delay of a year to follow before the first issue appeared in February 1996. I was elated with a later issue when Editor Glazier said in his column “inside Springfield!”:
“Probably the most discussed series of articles ever to appear in this magazine is Thel Spencer’s FAREWELL TO FEAR, the autobiography of Springfieldian Ena Tarrasch who makes it to the altar in this installment only to find her pursuit of happiness interrupted by phobias and nightmares from her earlier days in Nazi Germany.”
FAREWELL TO FEAR is such an important addition to the holocaust genre, it will first be published in hardcover. |As we near the date of publication in the fall of 1996, it seems only fair to her readers that they be informed of Ena’s current activities. She continues to house foreign students in her home - Japanese Naoki Miki being her current house guest - companion and absolute joy. (I have noticed that each student who occupies her spare room surpasses in virtue his predecessor.)
Ena is an active member at the new Temple Israel, recently erected on property southeast of Springfield, out Route 60 on Farm Road 193. Three mornings a week will find Ena at the water aerobics class she takes at the Hammons Heart Institute. She attributes her good health these days to the regular exercise she gets in this activity; notwithstanding the fact that she underwent open heart surgery with four bypasses a year ago.
Tuesday evenings will usually find Ena with her Recorder Group of the Ozarks when about seven recorder players converge on her music room and play the look-like-flute instruments that range from one foot to three feet in length. They have been playing together for 35 years, and the only other member of the original group who attended the first session with Ena is Dr. Richard Mears.
The three other members of the bridge group she attends once a week say she plays an excellent game of bridge, despite the fact that she has been known to trump her partner’s trick or chicken out of a finesse on very rare occasions. But haven’t we all?
Volunteer work at the new blood center keeps taking up Ena’s time. As a board member and volunteer at the Jewish Community Center she helps out by setting up tables and preparing food. After ten years she retired from being a volunteer visitor at the medical for Federal Prisoners when her favorite inmate, a man named Sendoni, was shipped back to Italy only to be murdered - and event Sendoni predicted would happen. But Ena remembers only positive things about the charming man: how he kissed her hand in European-style greeting; how she would buy him coffee at the canteen and how she would spread a napkin and set the table with silverware and behave as graciously as possible. She never heard the total number of persons he had “taken out”, but he was always a gentleman to her.
The Rosenbaum store on the north side of Park / Central Square in Springfield is a long established part of the business community, having been in business since the ‘70's. Recently in the store to make a purchase, I asked the Rosenbaum brothers the rhetorical question of whether they knew Ernest Tarrasch. They admitted to not only being friends of Ernest’s but also distant relatives. That is, they said, their mothers were distant relatives. Once the subject was broached, Larry Rosenbaum began relating, non-stop in stand-up-comedian style, stories of their families’ long association. Here undoubtedly was a man who knew and loved Ernest Tarrasch.
At that precise moment the idea of writing the life story of Ernest Tarrasch occurred to me. So FAREWELL TO FEAR, going to press in December “96, will be followed by HELLO HAPPINESS and readers will be lavishly entertained with recounts on the light side submitted by family and friends of Ernest Tarrasch and told to Thel Spencer.