Esther Yaffie

Esther was born in Chicago on the east side, at 13th and Jefferson, into a working-class family with roots in Europe. Her mother came from Austria-Hungary and had been a teacher there, though she did not teach in America, and her father, born in Hungary, worked as a baker and later as a foreman of a bakery. Esther was the third of seven children, with four older brothers and two younger, and often longed for a sister, so she grew close to a circle of girlfriends. Because her mother was often unwell, Esther could not bring friends home, but she was known as the life of the party at their houses. The home was not religious, though her mother lit Shabbos candles and made challah, and Esther attended synagogue mainly on holidays with her father.

Esther finished grammar school and went to work young, taking early jobs at Sears and briefly at a candy factory. Active and athletic, she loved the playground, rowing boats at the park, singing, and dancing, and she taught herself to play popular music after classical piano lessons. She married at eighteen, but the marriage brought hardship, and after five years she divorced and raised her two children, Seymour and Leona, on her own, caring also for her ailing father after his leg was amputated. She worked eighteen years at a match corporation, rising to supervisor of the mailing division. A later marriage to Mr. Miller also ended, and she endured deep grief when her son Seymour, a radio operator on a bomber, was killed in a training accident over the Gulf of Mexico.

When her daughter Leona sought a warmer climate, Esther moved with the family to Dallas, where she quit her job to raise her two grandsons and later saw the family grow to include triplets and twins. In Dallas she met and married Maury, a good-natured, fastidious man much older than she, who became a loving grandfather figure to the children until his death at ninety-one. Esther embraced Dallas life and became devoted to the Jewish center, where she volunteered tirelessly in the kitchen and setting tables, finding great joy in helping others. Reflecting on her life, she urged her children and grandchildren to communicate, to be good to one another, and always to help those in need.

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