Section 2: Coming Of Age -An Introduction (by Andrew)

“Now we add sight to sound.”

            These words were famously spoken by David Sarnoff when he introduced television to the public at the 1939 New York World’s Fair. It was a bold statement, but accurate. No longer content to consume stories merely aurally, people were provided with moving pictures right there in their living rooms.

When I first heard the speech, I was a Radio/Television/Film student at Northwestern. A few months earlier, my grandmother had come to visit me on campus and sat in on several of my classes. She was especially impressed by Professor Jim Webster, who taught me a course on audience research and ratings.

“You are a wonderful teacher,” she told him. “I didn’t understand anything you said. But I know from the way Andrew talks about you that you have a lot to offer. Anyone who can get him to keep his mouth shut for a full hour deserves a standing ovation.”

After class, I took Goodma to my favorite used bookstore in Evanston. She quickly found an old biography entitled, The General: David Sarnoff and the Rise of the Communications Industry. We bought the book and she wrote a lovely note to my professor:

“Thank you for welcoming me into your classroom this afternoon. You may not know this, but Andrew is related to the man on the cover of this book. My sister married The General’s brother and he has had a tremendous impact on my life and the life of everyone in our family. I can see you’re having a tremendous impact on Andrew as well and I want you to know we all appreciate that.”

I knew Aunt Clara’s last name was Sarnoff. However, I had no idea that her brother-in-law was so important in the history of television. Once I had the information, I felt my decision to pursue a career in the field was validated. So a year later when his name came up in my studies, I was sure to pay close attention.

“Now we add sight to sound.”

Up until this point, my grandmother’s stories have been primarily focused on her earliest years. She is young, innocent, and often charming.  The next batch of stories describes a slightly more tumultuous time in her life. As the youngest in her family, she watched each of her siblings outgrow their lives on the farm.

One by one, Elsie, Clara, and Maurice left the family home and began their respective journeys. And slowly but surely, young Ruth experienced the rites of passage that we associate with Coming of Age – her first period, first love, her first discovery of what it meant to have big bazooms (that’s what she always called her ample chest. Just writing the word makes me smile). Fortunately she documented each event and just like the advent of the television set, these stories add another dimension to the young farm girl’s adventures.

My memories of coming of age are not quite so spectacular. When I think back to my teen years, I know exactly the moment when I felt I had become a man. Many of my friends marked that occasion with Bar Mitzvahs. Others marked it with first dates and first kisses. For me, it was an accidental discovery while driving down the highway in my 1990 White Ford Tempo.

It was a sunny afternoon and the window was rolled down. I had my left arm resting on the open window and I glanced at the left side mirror. I saw the reflection of my hairy arm. Back in the olden days of the early 1990s, none of us had cel phones or GPS systems or any of the other tools we use to distract ourselves from driving. So this discovery that my arm had hair on it (and it waved in the wind!) was the first time that I looked at myself and said, I’m an adult.

I know it’s not the most exciting story. But every time I rest my arm along my open car window and catch a glimpse of it as I’m driving, I remember that day. And I remember feeling as if I was irrevocably a grown up.

I still make efforts to revisit my childhood all the time. You can find me regressing at Disneyland on a fairly regular basis. I’m more than happy to get down on the floor with my daughters and play with dolls or blocks or build marble raceways.  I sometimes think the reason I enjoy spending time at my daughter’s school is that I genuinely enjoy being surrounded by other kids.

But enough about me. Let’s get back to a growing Ruth. This next batch of stories sheds further light on what made my grandmother into the woman she became. It’s clear how the smallest changes had the greatest impact, the surprises she found along the way shaped her opinion of herself, and how meeting a boy named George Weiss changed her life forever.

But first, we’re back to Aunt Clara as she becomes an adult and moves out of the Oppenheimer family’s cocoon…