The Memorial Service for Didi April 30, 1978
Preface:
My remarks during the Service for Didi on April 30 - which follow - were composed only in outline, on short notice,
and rather informally delivered; all this must be noted.
A life of over 95 years, a vivid and complex personality, can in no way be adequately recalled in such brief remarks. In
retrospect there are many other things I would have liked to have said, many other things which could and should have
been said, many important observations which would have been appropriate. Walter, Martin and Mother especially
added, however briefly, es-sential elements to whatever was said by me,
In the context of what has been said above the transcript of this very private and largely spontaneous service may be
read.
David
Ella Pauline Herxheimer Bruell
Born - November 6, 1882, in London
Died - April 28, 1978, in New Rochelle
David:
It is difficult to know where to begin because one has so very many memories of Didi. My own very first earliest
memories of life go back to the summer of l949. My parents, Walter, Liska went West and Christopher and I spent the
summer with Didi. That summer remains in my memory a very wonderful summer. One of the highlights of my life at that
point, I was five years old, was when Didi would every day read a chapter from Dr. Doolittle, She had a wonderful way
of reading those chapters.
There were of course many other memories… the days off. We have a very wonderful mother but I think every
Thursday morning we were rather pleased to see her go because that would be a spe-cial day. The whole day with Didi.
She would plan some special circumstances, cooking or some other thing. That was always a very important day for us...
Thursday, the day off.
We went on these many trips Didi was always there to welcome us home, And when we one by one finally left home,
Didi was always there again when we came home.
And when we were away there were always the wonderful letters from Didi, filled with clippings and gossip and all kinds
of other news from home, Always one of the highlights of the vacation, wherever we were staying, the letters from home
were something we looked forward to.
Didi was always there for us. She was always there to talk to, to reminisce with, to advise, to criticize - and she could
criticize us, believe me - but finally always to praise us. She was always there. She was there for me as a child, she was
there as I grew up, she was there all through the years and she was still there for Jeanne this Fall. Jeanne was living as
you know in New Rochelle, as a student. She would have frustrating days, she would have exciting days. She would
come home and Didi would be there to talk to and tell about it. So Didi, I think, has always been there for us.
Didi’s life, of course, as we all know, was a very long life. She was born in 1882 and for the younger members of
the family that is a very distant time. A time without telephones, without radio, without television, without cars, without
planes. It seems very, very distant and yet she was a link to that time. She made that time terribly real for us with her
extremely vivid memories of that time. And that time in history will always be for me, and I’m sure for many of the
others here, will always be associated with her.
She had, as we know from her, a very wonderful Victorian child-hood. She grew up in the London of Sherlock Holmes.
She brought this back to us, made this extremely real for us. She was in another way, I think, also a link to the past.
When she was born in 1882 both her grandfathers, Rabbi Solomon Herxheirner and her other grandfather Isaac Jaffe,
were still living. Both old gentle-men, very old gentlemen. And these men had been born in the first decade of the 19th
century. Very much in the traditional society, very much in the past. A society that is really long lost to us. And she was a
link to that very distant past. The pre—industrial period, really. When these men were born, before Lincoln was born
and shortly after Washington died, she recalled as a six year old child, visiting her grandfather Isaac Jaffe, who was very
old and he was bedridden. And she remembered this very dignified old gen-tleman in bed. And he died not too long after
that. She had a vivid memory of him, somebody who was linked to the early part of the 19th century. Her great-
grandchildren Gary & David will cer-tainly remember visiting a very old lady. Visiting her and have memories of her all
their lives. And her great-grandchildren, some of them will certainly live into the second half of the twentieth century. It
will be a very different time. It will be as remote from today as the early 19th century is for us.
And so Didi, you see, is the link, the link between that very remote past and that distant future that her great-
grandchildren Gary, David, Ellen, Natasha, Jon and the newly awaited great-grandchildren will know. She is a link.
Her life then was a very long life and it was not always an easy life. Her early years were very happy but she lost her
father whom she dearly loved when she was quite young, a teenager. There was an unhappy marriage. There was the
loss of her brother who she was very much attached to, a tragic accident, the Empress of Ireland. There was World War
I, There were these tumultuous years of the Weimar Republic, the terrible years before World War II, the war itself, and
then the long years in New Rochelle. And growing old
But, and that’s a very big but, there were many wonderful things in her life. Mom, who was a terribly important part
of her life for seventy years. And although she would often, to her face often perhaps criticize Mom, and they would have
their differences, she had immense pride, a very justifiable pride, in her daughter. She always complained about people
bragging. The last time Walter and I visited her she complained “Walter, your bragging about something�. But she
always bragged about her daughter. That was the one thing she bragged about and with good justification.
And then of course, the growing family. Five grandchildren who became terribly attached to her. And great-
grandchildren, and grandchildren- in-law, all of whom she became very attached to.
Her piano. She must have played in a wonderful way. I visited an old friend of hers in Scotland who used to sing and
Didi would play the piano. They had wonderful recitals.
Her language lessons. Into her nineties she taught language. Nina’s granddaughters were among her last students,
Her first students must be very old people if they have survived. I think they were a source of great gratification to her
and I think she was of course a very effective teacher.
There were wonderful friends. And some of them, one can be very happy, are here. Some of her dearest friends, Bridie,
Nina, Dr. Lipman. All her life she had wonderful relations with certain people.
There were trips. She was past ninety when she made her last trip to Alaska which was certainly quite striking.
So her life then was not in every way an easy life but there were man wonderful things in that life. Many things that she
enjoyed.
Now she has passed away. And she has passed away in the Spring. Of course the Spring is a time of renewal. The
magnolias, which she, as Mom reminded me, enjoyed so much are seen blooming outside her window. They are in full
bloom today. And we have brought some down today. And so it is Spring. It is a time of renewal and reaffirmation of
life. For our family, of course, that is especially vivid because we have had a great deal of renewal of life. New life in
January, Natasha. Earlier this very month another great-grandson in Vancouver. And in June an event that she was very
much aware of, very conscious of and she spoke of the last time I saw her, The new arrival expected in two months. This
juxtaposition, so to say, of old life gone and new life beginning, I think is very appropriate. The season is very
appropriate. I think she would have enjoyed the beautiful day and that is very appropriate too.
As a person Didi felt things terribly intensely, I think. She experienc-ed it seems to me, much of life in extremes. And
when Didi was sad she was very sad. And when she was mad she was very mad. And when she was unreasonable she
could be very unreasonable. This was all a part of her. But when she was happy she could be immensely happy. She had
a warm, wonder-ful smile. And when she was kind and generous she could be the kindest, most generous person in the
world. And she could be extremely understanding and she could be very wise.
And so altogether I think she was a very singular personality. I know that every person in this room certainly feels that.
And not only was she a very singular personality, she was very human. The whole range of human emotions was
somehow very pronounced in her. The highs of human existence and the lows. This was all very, very pronounced. She
lived life in that sense, very intensely.
She was not by conventional standards what you would call a religious person, but she was a highly principled person.
Very much so. And she had enduring values. Some of these values would be represented by the German quotations she
loved to remind us of. And she was also capable, as Jeanne reminded me so correctly, so rightly, of growing. She had
the enduring values of a very distant time and a very distant childhood. Some things that were happening in the modern
world were somewhat difficult for her to under-stand. But she did try to understand and she did adjust to them, And she
grew in that sense, She was capable of this kind of growth, growth with a changing world. So life for her was not always
an easy proposition. There were difficult external events which I have already mentioned and there were difficulties of
internal mood. She was an unusually proud person. She was a very private person. And that’s one reason why we
have this very intimate gathering, This is of course the way she would have wanted it. Nothing more than this. She was an
extremely independent person and she was also a person with immense dignity. She perhaps had some of these qualities
(I particularly think of pride, with reference to her last years) in greater amount than was good for her. They made life
somewhat difficult for her. But she endured and she persevered and she rose again and again, to the very last time I saw
her, above difficult circumstances. To be able to smile, to enjoy life. Again and again she came back and she endured.
She lived then to a very old age. She had no ambition to achieve that old age. I recall her quoting DeGaulle to the effect
that old age was a shipwreck and she somehow felt that way. She once said of an aunt of my father’s who lived on
finally to her ninety-seventh year, “God has forgotten her�, Well God, she may have sometimes felt, had forgotten
her too. But He has now very much remembered her. She had no ambition to live to this very old age but she lived to it
with great dignity finally. And she and also we have a great deal to be grateful for. She lived to this age at home,
surrounded by dear friends who came and saw her and she had a merciful end. That I think was terribly important. The
end, when it came, came in a merciful way. And so I think that she helped us and has helped us to understand life. To
understand about life, about courage, about values. To the very end of her life she had so much to give. And she never
gave up. She gave up certain things in life, toward the end, mainly by force of circumstances, things which were difficult
to give up. But to the end she was very much in touch with life. The very last time I saw her on Sunday, she spoke about
Natasha, she spoke about the baby in Vancouver, she spoke about the baby that is expected in June. She spoke about
Liska and Christopher coming this summer for a visit, And she spoke about finding something for me that she had mis-
placed, And I think that is a positive thing. She was very much in touch with life, And so her last years were undeniably
difficult. They were difficult for her and they were sometimes difficult for us to witness, to see. But there was great value
in them, She had much to give. I have to think of Sarka and Jeanne who only really knew Didi in these very last years.
Some of you of course have known Didi, Mom for seventy years, others forty years, thirty years.,, but even Jeanne and
Sarka who only knew Didi in these last few years, for them Didi was anything but a shell of a person. She remained to
the end a very vivid personality, She was someone who could convey so much to them and with whom it was still
possible, in the tenth decade of her life, to form a meaningful and close relationship.
So in the end we are fortunate, In the end I think one can say she was fortunate too. It was a life that was lived very
intensely and now it has come to a merciful end. And we can rejoice for that. In that sense this is a happy occasion. She
will of course go on living. She will go on living because she has left a large and rapidly growing number of descendants.
Those descendants who remember her, will all their lives have the most vivid memories of her. Her influence goes on
through mother, through her grand children, the others to whom she was exposed, her friends. Many others will have
memories of her. In that sense she will go on living.
One of the last visits Mother had with her, as she told us the other day at dinner...a nurse in her presence said “How
old is your mother? (to Mother) and she said, Ninety-five. And the nurse said something to the effect of - I suppose she
wants to go on living to a hundred and she, Didi, heard this and she said, “Not a hundred, three hundred. And this
was very typical of her. This, as Mom recognized, was a terribly typical remark. All the elements of her personality were
really encompassed in that remark. And I think she will go on living three hundred years. The Memory of her, the
recollection of her as it is passed down through the generations for hundreds of years. May she rest in peace.
Walter:
I don’t quite trust myself to say too much but of course for the five of us Didi was terribly, terribly important.
Unfortunately two of them are not here but I spoke to them last night and their presence is very much here too in our
thoughts. I know they would like to be here and in a way they are here.
I think Martin would like to say a few words and then maybe we can just sit a few moments and just have our thoughts
of Didi. I would say also that I think David spoke very much the way we all felt and the way we think.
Martin:
I can only say that Didi has been in essence really a second mother. We always felt we had almost three parents, a
wonderful father, a wonderful mother and a wonderful grandmother who really substituted as... kind of an advantage
over other kids. We had three people who we could kind of look up to and consider and could come to for guidance
and in a way we still can come to Didi for guidance because she has given us so much that we can still kind of follow the
types of things, of principles that she has given to us and given to both our parents. And the nice thing is that we all
appreciated her and that we did both understand that. And she wasn’t unappreciated.
Nellie:
I would like to say one thing that is very very important for me. I was able to give my mother more time than most
daughters in a lifetime can give to her. That I could give it to her because I had and have a husband who so fully
understood that it was very, very important for me. They saw each other not too much and that’s I think what made
it possible that for forty years she lived with us and was enjoyed in a way that her three grandsons here couldn’t have
expressed more beautifully. And I know that Liska and Christopher and Dick and Rhoda would feel exactly the same
way but all this was only possible because Frieder (Dad for the children) had such wonderful, wonderful under-standing
Without his support, also sometimes in very difficult moments I could no have done for Didi, for Mother, what I did. I
think this is what I feel I have to say.
And I have to thank all of you who are here who were very much a part of her. Especially the three boys who talked just
so beautifully.
Preface:
My remarks during the Service for Didi on April 30 - which follow - were composed only in outline, on short notice,
and rather informally delivered; all this must be noted.
A life of over 95 years, a vivid and complex personality, can in no way be adequately recalled in such brief remarks. In
retrospect there are many other things I would have liked to have said, many other things which could and should have
been said, many important observations which would have been appropriate. Walter, Martin and Mother especially
added, however briefly, es-sential elements to whatever was said by me,
In the context of what has been said above the transcript of this very private and largely spontaneous service may be
read.
David
Ella Pauline Herxheimer Bruell
Born - November 6, 1882, in London
Died - April 28, 1978, in New Rochelle
David:
It is difficult to know where to begin because one has so very many memories of Didi. My own very first earliest
memories of life go back to the summer of l949. My parents, Walter, Liska went West and Christopher and I spent the
summer with Didi. That summer remains in my memory a very wonderful summer. One of the highlights of my life at that
point, I was five years old, was when Didi would every day read a chapter from Dr. Doolittle, She had a wonderful way
of reading those chapters.
There were of course many other memories… the days off. We have a very wonderful mother but I think every
Thursday morning we were rather pleased to see her go because that would be a spe-cial day. The whole day with Didi.
She would plan some special circumstances, cooking or some other thing. That was always a very important day for us...
Thursday, the day off.
We went on these many trips Didi was always there to welcome us home, And when we one by one finally left home,
Didi was always there again when we came home.
And when we were away there were always the wonderful letters from Didi, filled with clippings and gossip and all kinds
of other news from home, Always one of the highlights of the vacation, wherever we were staying, the letters from home
were something we looked forward to.
Didi was always there for us. She was always there to talk to, to reminisce with, to advise, to criticize - and she could
criticize us, believe me - but finally always to praise us. She was always there. She was there for me as a child, she was
there as I grew up, she was there all through the years and she was still there for Jeanne this Fall. Jeanne was living as
you know in New Rochelle, as a student. She would have frustrating days, she would have exciting days. She would
come home and Didi would be there to talk to and tell about it. So Didi, I think, has always been there for us.
Didi’s life, of course, as we all know, was a very long life. She was born in 1882 and for the younger members of
the family that is a very distant time. A time without telephones, without radio, without television, without cars, without
planes. It seems very, very distant and yet she was a link to that time. She made that time terribly real for us with her
extremely vivid memories of that time. And that time in history will always be for me, and I’m sure for many of the
others here, will always be associated with her.
She had, as we know from her, a very wonderful Victorian child-hood. She grew up in the London of Sherlock Holmes.
She brought this back to us, made this extremely real for us. She was in another way, I think, also a link to the past.
When she was born in 1882 both her grandfathers, Rabbi Solomon Herxheirner and her other grandfather Isaac Jaffe,
were still living. Both old gentle-men, very old gentlemen. And these men had been born in the first decade of the 19th
century. Very much in the traditional society, very much in the past. A society that is really long lost to us. And she was a
link to that very distant past. The pre—industrial period, really. When these men were born, before Lincoln was born
and shortly after Washington died, she recalled as a six year old child, visiting her grandfather Isaac Jaffe, who was very
old and he was bedridden. And she remembered this very dignified old gen-tleman in bed. And he died not too long after
that. She had a vivid memory of him, somebody who was linked to the early part of the 19th century. Her great-
grandchildren Gary & David will cer-tainly remember visiting a very old lady. Visiting her and have memories of her all
their lives. And her great-grandchildren, some of them will certainly live into the second half of the twentieth century. It
will be a very different time. It will be as remote from today as the early 19th century is for us.
And so Didi, you see, is the link, the link between that very remote past and that distant future that her great-
grandchildren Gary, David, Ellen, Natasha, Jon and the newly awaited great-grandchildren will know. She is a link.
Her life then was a very long life and it was not always an easy life. Her early years were very happy but she lost her
father whom she dearly loved when she was quite young, a teenager. There was an unhappy marriage. There was the
loss of her brother who she was very much attached to, a tragic accident, the Empress of Ireland. There was World War
I, There were these tumultuous years of the Weimar Republic, the terrible years before World War II, the war itself, and
then the long years in New Rochelle. And growing old
But, and that’s a very big but, there were many wonderful things in her life. Mom, who was a terribly important part
of her life for seventy years. And although she would often, to her face often perhaps criticize Mom, and they would have
their differences, she had immense pride, a very justifiable pride, in her daughter. She always complained about people
bragging. The last time Walter and I visited her she complained “Walter, your bragging about something�. But she
always bragged about her daughter. That was the one thing she bragged about and with good justification.
And then of course, the growing family. Five grandchildren who became terribly attached to her. And great-
grandchildren, and grandchildren- in-law, all of whom she became very attached to.
Her piano. She must have played in a wonderful way. I visited an old friend of hers in Scotland who used to sing and
Didi would play the piano. They had wonderful recitals.
Her language lessons. Into her nineties she taught language. Nina’s granddaughters were among her last students,
Her first students must be very old people if they have survived. I think they were a source of great gratification to her
and I think she was of course a very effective teacher.
There were wonderful friends. And some of them, one can be very happy, are here. Some of her dearest friends, Bridie,
Nina, Dr. Lipman. All her life she had wonderful relations with certain people.
There were trips. She was past ninety when she made her last trip to Alaska which was certainly quite striking.
So her life then was not in every way an easy life but there were man wonderful things in that life. Many things that she
enjoyed.
Now she has passed away. And she has passed away in the Spring. Of course the Spring is a time of renewal. The
magnolias, which she, as Mom reminded me, enjoyed so much are seen blooming outside her window. They are in full
bloom today. And we have brought some down today. And so it is Spring. It is a time of renewal and reaffirmation of
life. For our family, of course, that is especially vivid because we have had a great deal of renewal of life. New life in
January, Natasha. Earlier this very month another great-grandson in Vancouver. And in June an event that she was very
much aware of, very conscious of and she spoke of the last time I saw her, The new arrival expected in two months. This
juxtaposition, so to say, of old life gone and new life beginning, I think is very appropriate. The season is very
appropriate. I think she would have enjoyed the beautiful day and that is very appropriate too.
As a person Didi felt things terribly intensely, I think. She experienc-ed it seems to me, much of life in extremes. And
when Didi was sad she was very sad. And when she was mad she was very mad. And when she was unreasonable she
could be very unreasonable. This was all a part of her. But when she was happy she could be immensely happy. She had
a warm, wonder-ful smile. And when she was kind and generous she could be the kindest, most generous person in the
world. And she could be extremely understanding and she could be very wise.
And so altogether I think she was a very singular personality. I know that every person in this room certainly feels that.
And not only was she a very singular personality, she was very human. The whole range of human emotions was
somehow very pronounced in her. The highs of human existence and the lows. This was all very, very pronounced. She
lived life in that sense, very intensely.
She was not by conventional standards what you would call a religious person, but she was a highly principled person.
Very much so. And she had enduring values. Some of these values would be represented by the German quotations she
loved to remind us of. And she was also capable, as Jeanne reminded me so correctly, so rightly, of growing. She had
the enduring values of a very distant time and a very distant childhood. Some things that were happening in the modern
world were somewhat difficult for her to under-stand. But she did try to understand and she did adjust to them, And she
grew in that sense, She was capable of this kind of growth, growth with a changing world. So life for her was not always
an easy proposition. There were difficult external events which I have already mentioned and there were difficulties of
internal mood. She was an unusually proud person. She was a very private person. And that’s one reason why we
have this very intimate gathering, This is of course the way she would have wanted it. Nothing more than this. She was an
extremely independent person and she was also a person with immense dignity. She perhaps had some of these qualities
(I particularly think of pride, with reference to her last years) in greater amount than was good for her. They made life
somewhat difficult for her. But she endured and she persevered and she rose again and again, to the very last time I saw
her, above difficult circumstances. To be able to smile, to enjoy life. Again and again she came back and she endured.
She lived then to a very old age. She had no ambition to achieve that old age. I recall her quoting DeGaulle to the effect
that old age was a shipwreck and she somehow felt that way. She once said of an aunt of my father’s who lived on
finally to her ninety-seventh year, “God has forgotten her�, Well God, she may have sometimes felt, had forgotten
her too. But He has now very much remembered her. She had no ambition to live to this very old age but she lived to it
with great dignity finally. And she and also we have a great deal to be grateful for. She lived to this age at home,
surrounded by dear friends who came and saw her and she had a merciful end. That I think was terribly important. The
end, when it came, came in a merciful way. And so I think that she helped us and has helped us to understand life. To
understand about life, about courage, about values. To the very end of her life she had so much to give. And she never
gave up. She gave up certain things in life, toward the end, mainly by force of circumstances, things which were difficult
to give up. But to the end she was very much in touch with life. The very last time I saw her on Sunday, she spoke about
Natasha, she spoke about the baby in Vancouver, she spoke about the baby that is expected in June. She spoke about
Liska and Christopher coming this summer for a visit, And she spoke about finding something for me that she had mis-
placed, And I think that is a positive thing. She was very much in touch with life, And so her last years were undeniably
difficult. They were difficult for her and they were sometimes difficult for us to witness, to see. But there was great value
in them, She had much to give. I have to think of Sarka and Jeanne who only really knew Didi in these very last years.
Some of you of course have known Didi, Mom for seventy years, others forty years, thirty years.,, but even Jeanne and
Sarka who only knew Didi in these last few years, for them Didi was anything but a shell of a person. She remained to
the end a very vivid personality, She was someone who could convey so much to them and with whom it was still
possible, in the tenth decade of her life, to form a meaningful and close relationship.
So in the end we are fortunate, In the end I think one can say she was fortunate too. It was a life that was lived very
intensely and now it has come to a merciful end. And we can rejoice for that. In that sense this is a happy occasion. She
will of course go on living. She will go on living because she has left a large and rapidly growing number of descendants.
Those descendants who remember her, will all their lives have the most vivid memories of her. Her influence goes on
through mother, through her grand children, the others to whom she was exposed, her friends. Many others will have
memories of her. In that sense she will go on living.
One of the last visits Mother had with her, as she told us the other day at dinner...a nurse in her presence said “How
old is your mother? (to Mother) and she said, Ninety-five. And the nurse said something to the effect of - I suppose she
wants to go on living to a hundred and she, Didi, heard this and she said, “Not a hundred, three hundred. And this
was very typical of her. This, as Mom recognized, was a terribly typical remark. All the elements of her personality were
really encompassed in that remark. And I think she will go on living three hundred years. The Memory of her, the
recollection of her as it is passed down through the generations for hundreds of years. May she rest in peace.
Walter:
I don’t quite trust myself to say too much but of course for the five of us Didi was terribly, terribly important.
Unfortunately two of them are not here but I spoke to them last night and their presence is very much here too in our
thoughts. I know they would like to be here and in a way they are here.
I think Martin would like to say a few words and then maybe we can just sit a few moments and just have our thoughts
of Didi. I would say also that I think David spoke very much the way we all felt and the way we think.
Martin:
I can only say that Didi has been in essence really a second mother. We always felt we had almost three parents, a
wonderful father, a wonderful mother and a wonderful grandmother who really substituted as... kind of an advantage
over other kids. We had three people who we could kind of look up to and consider and could come to for guidance
and in a way we still can come to Didi for guidance because she has given us so much that we can still kind of follow the
types of things, of principles that she has given to us and given to both our parents. And the nice thing is that we all
appreciated her and that we did both understand that. And she wasn’t unappreciated.
Nellie:
I would like to say one thing that is very very important for me. I was able to give my mother more time than most
daughters in a lifetime can give to her. That I could give it to her because I had and have a husband who so fully
understood that it was very, very important for me. They saw each other not too much and that’s I think what made
it possible that for forty years she lived with us and was enjoyed in a way that her three grandsons here couldn’t have
expressed more beautifully. And I know that Liska and Christopher and Dick and Rhoda would feel exactly the same
way but all this was only possible because Frieder (Dad for the children) had such wonderful, wonderful under-standing
Without his support, also sometimes in very difficult moments I could no have done for Didi, for Mother, what I did. I
think this is what I feel I have to say.
And I have to thank all of you who are here who were very much a part of her. Especially the three boys who talked just
so beautifully.
