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Ruth Indig |
YouTube link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B59iZv_Ya8M
Text of speech at headstone unveiling for Ruth Indig:
RABBI: From my conversations with the Indig family over a number of months, and one of the letters that I was sent from Joseph Indig, I became knowledgeable of the kind of life that Ruth Indig led, and I realized that perhaps she is the personification of this passage of the bible: For she too realized in her lifetime that even though material wealth is important, there are also those things which rise above the importance of material wealth. And so, she in her life showed all around her how important it is to cherish the values of compassion and honesty and integrity and caring. In her lifetime she spent a great deal of time, along with her beloved husband - may he live and be well - in raising a family to success. And when that was done, when she looked back and saw that she has accomplished that, she then began to give her attention and her time and her efforts and her strength to other causes - to important causes on this world. To show that is important to not merely be concerned about one’s self, but to extend one’s self [to help others.] So, she became active in Haddasah, helping to raise funds which no doubt saved many, many lives, and made the standard of living, and the quality of life, a little bit more bearable for all those people who had to come and use the services of the Hadassah centers. She devoted much of her time to cancer research and helped support those groups, and she devoted a great deal of her time and effort to the eye clinics where people have the opportunity to come in and receive treatment for this sight. She showed by her actions that to understand that fulfilling some needs in this world will leave this world a better place, and this was her legacy - to understand and to let it be understood, that it's important for the one brief second that we spend on this earth to leave it a better place than we found it. And in her own small way Ruth Indig was able to accomplish this gigantic task. So, when we come here to pay our respects, and to remember her when she was alive, it's important for us as well to be determined to leave this world a better place than we found it. This is what she would have wanted, and to all those people that she so tenderly touched she left that message. And now her son will say a few words.
MAURICE INDIG: Thank you rabbi, I don't think I could match the elequence of the rabbi, but I'd like to say something about the remembrance I have of my mother, and perhaps some of her history that might mean something to all of us. It certainly means something to me. My mother came to this country in the year 1920 from Dukla, Poland. She came with her two sisters who are also gone now. According to the ship's manifest she was 15 years old at the time. Then her two brothers Izzy and Hymie came a year later in the year 1921. Interesting that her father had left Dukla in 1913 hoping to bring his family with him instantly, but then the war broke out and they were stranded there for seven years. Somehow the family managed to survive, and they were reunited in this country. They lived in Belvedere street in Brooklyn and there the family prospered. The girls eventually married. My father met my mother about a year after she got to this country. They were both just teenagers. They met at a Dukla Society dance. The Dukla Society was made of the people from that area, that formed a society just like the [unknown] society. It took quite a while for them to marry; they didn't marry until nine years later. They married in 1930, and Hannah and I were born subsequently. During the years that my mother took care of us and nurtured us, I loved her dearly. I remember as a small child, I promised her someday – this was during the war - I'll buy you a house near a lake. [unintelligible] In any event, my mother was supportive of Hannah and myself [unintelligible]. My mother was also quite supportive of my father. In the latter part of the depression, they opened the candy store in Queens, and my mother essentially ran the candy store while my dad sold insurance. So, she was really supportive at that time and that continued as an example. Subsequently my mother worked with my dad in the company called the Rose Rainwear Company, where they manufactured umbrellas. And that piece of work meant that she went every day with dad to the factory and they did their thing. but Hannah and I were not neglected during that period, because she always came home in time to make dinner, and she was always there to listen to my problems, and I'm sure Hannah's problems. And she was just there. How she managed to find the time to work full-time with my dad, cook meals, shop, I don't really know, but somehow she did that. As the years went on eventually her career ended in the umbrella business and that's when she turned to her other her other chosen ideas which was to help other people. And in her early 60s she went to volunteer at the chronic disease hospital in Brooklyn, where she served there, helping those that could not help themselves. She helped feed them, she tended to them, and that went on for 25 years. She finally was able to leave that chosen charity that she did, after she had logged in more than twenty thousand hours. She was there 4 hours a day, 6 hours a day; five, six days a week, and logged in that many hours. And she was recognized by many by many societies. I think that probably the thing that she treasured the most was a heart of gold that was given to her by the Masonic Society, for their knowledge of what she had done, as far as working in the hospital, and also her work through Hadassah, which the rabbi mentioned. There she not only gave her time, but she gave where it counts also, and that's out of her pocketbook. My mom and dad are not wealthy people, but she would give a thousand dollars each time for a page. And she was not above asking many of us for contributions, and it was pretty hard to turn her down. So many of us got into the act as well. And after that was done at the age of 85, her health really began to suffer Then my mom and dad finally decided that they had enough of staying alone in Brooklyn, and they decided to join me in Fremont. This is where the story has a [unintelligible]. They moved into a lovely, large, spacious apartment and it had a beautiful pool within a very convenient walking distance - they could just walk out to their pool - and my father and mother often sat outside and enjoyed the balmy California weather. so, she kind of had her house by the lake, that I had told her about years ago. And a couple of times we even got mom to do a little swimming with some assistance. But by this time her health was really declining. She was crippled by osteoporosis and she had other ailments as well. And eventually in the last year of her life she spent that in a nursing home, and she was cared for there. And it wasn't as if my mom and dad were separated, because dad went every day to visit her. And he didn’t visit her for 15 minutes - he was there for like five hours that's, and not six days a week, but like seven days a week. And it was a black day to him when he couldn't get there – that was very upsetting to him. So, when we talk about losses, my loss is significant; I'm sure Hannah's loss is significant; but it palls in comparison to my dad's loss, because this was his wife of 63 years. This was his wife, his friend, his sweetheart, his companion, and that makes his loss far more greater than mine. Finally, I'd like to share with you a final thought about what my mother thought about life five weeks before her death. I was in with her in the nursing home, and I was wheeling her through the home. This was a woman that was really wracked with pain. If you look at some of her final pictures she has her hand behind her back from this osteoporosis business. She’s racked with pain and mentally she had her problems too. But she said to me, “you know Moishe [Maurice], there's a lot of sick people in this place isn't there?” I said, “yeah, there is. She says, “you know what? It's still good to be alive.” She was a fighter, she had a zest for living and when she died, she died fighting.”
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