Who Knew?

It's occurred to me that my own biography is coming out because of reading other people's obituaries. It seems as one hits the earth, or vaporizes into ash, out comes a memory. At the rate of people dying and being written about, and the frequency I read about them, when it comes to my own time there probably won't be a thought left in my head.

I may have anticipated this years ago when I recognized that something always seems to remind me of something. Hence, the Onofframp blog, and life as a Mobius strip. We just connect.

The obituary on Mary Emma Allison, 93, in today's NYT served to once again refresh a memory, this one about Halloween and Unicef, on Halloween. What are the odds of that?

In a delightfully told tale recounted by Margalit Fox we learn how Mary, a mother of three, a librarian, and the wife of a Presbyterian minister, came to start a charity, 60 years ago, what we now know as Unicef. The United Nations International Emergency Children's Fund, or more recently known as simply United Nation Children's Fund. A more wholesome set of goodness credentials are not possible. Mary it seems had them all.

I do remember holding the waxy, orange milk container when trick or treating in the 50s, shaking it and pushing it forward for some coins to be dropped in. What people dropped in I don't really remember, but there were probably pennies, and probably some "silver," likely dimes. It was the March of Dimes in October.

Before we got to enjoy the candy we had collected we took te cartons to the Episopal church that was the point of origin of this charity for me. My mother was Catholic, my father was Greek Orthodox, and I was baptized Greek Orthodox, but I went to Episcopal church and Sunday school. Alone. The only religious thing I've been left out of is a bar mitzvah.

My good friend who grew up in Manhattan went to Presbyertian Sunday school (his mother was a Presbyterian, his father Jewish). He remembers Unicef collctions and presenting the proceeds from the public elementary school to Eleanor Roosevelt at a school ceremony after Halloween. He always remembers the teachers being very dressed up that day.

For whatever reason I don't see much of the Unicef collection boxes on Halloween. And sometimes I do get stuck having to answer the door.

And what did the orange Unicef cartons remind me of in the 50s? I always thought they were the same color as St. Joseph's aspirin for children.

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