The Untimely Death of a Child

Less than a year after our grandparents Henry and Cecile arrived as immigrants with daughters Germaine, Felice and Simone, their youngest daughter, Simone, developed multiple myeloma which is cancer of the bone marrow. When I mention this diagnosis to medical people, they are all very surprised at how it could have been diagnosed back in 1913 with the tools that were then available. Simone was in St. Luke’s Hospital for a little over two weeks when she died on February 13, 1913, five weeks shy of turning 4 years old. She had only been in the United States for nine months.

To make this sad situation even sadder, our grandmother gave birth to her fourth child, Charles, on February 11, 1913, which was just two days before Simone died. I have wondered whether our grandmother was even able to see and comfort Simone when she was in the hospital. While one child is dying, another one is born. And no one ever seemed to talk about Simone again.

Because our grandparents had been in the country such a short time, they didn’t have much money. The Hebrew Free Burial Association (HFBA) in New York paid for the burial at Mt. Richmond Cemetery on Staten Island, as they had for years (and still do) for Jews with little resources. Casualties from the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire are buried in the cemetery as well.

It turned out to be quite a challenge to locate Simone’s grave, because though her death certificate listed M.R. Ocean View Cemetery in Staten Island as the place of burial Ocean View had no record of Simone. After talking with someone at the HFBA, I learned that the “M.R.” on the certificate stands for Mt. Richmond. The reason Ocean View was listed was that at the time Mt. Richmond didn’t have the right cemetery certification and since they are adjacent to one another, was able to share Ocean View’s certification.

The people at the HFBA were just wonderful in helping sort this out. Someone from HFBA went out to the cemetery to take a photograph of Simone’s headstone. I then got a phone call from them informing me that by some mistake, the name Simon was put on the headstone instead of Simone. This didn’t seem right, and so I ordered a corrected headstone to be erected which it was in August of 2005. And the folks at HFBA sent me a picture of the new headstone which you can see here.