Trajectory
by David Muller

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Chapter Eleven:
Family

Meeting Joyce

It is not an exaggeration to say that each day when I wake up and look at the beautiful woman next to me, I just cannot believe how lucky I am to get to spend another day with the love of my life. I am exceedingly grateful to G-d for bringing Joyce into my life for the past thirty-seven years and I am so looking forward to the next thirty-seven!

It began on Sept 5, 1986, a Sunday, when I was in Manhattan for the weekend visiting friends. I was invited to a lunch being given by David Blumberg, one of my business school classmates, at his apartment at the Apthorp at West 79th Street and West End Avenue in Manhattan.

I was sitting there on the couch next to my friend David Jaffe, when the most beautiful girl I had ever seen walked in the door. I said to David, “I’m going to marry that girl!”. She walked in, and started walking around the room looking for a place to sit, but all the seats were taken. I said to David, “If she starts walking toward us, you get up when I tell you to”. Sure enough, the girl started walking past us, and I said to David, “Okay, get up now”. David got up, and the girl sat down next to me.

We struck up a conversation, and she asked me where I live, fully expecting that the options for the response would be Upper West Side, Upper East Side, or maybe The Village. So when I responded “Niagara Falls Ontario”, she put her right hand up to the back of her ear and adjusted the volume on her hearing aid, and then asked, “Could you please repeat that?”

Well, after speaking for a while, I asked her if she wanted to go for a walk, and we took a walk around the Upper West Side. We went to Steve’s for ice cream with Oreos mixed in.

After a few hours, Joyce said that she would have to cut the day short soon as she had dinner plans. I was upset, figuring that she had a date. Sensing that, she told me that actually she was having dinner with a female friend, Jenny Gluckstein, who was over eighty years old. She went on to explain that she belonged to an organization called Dorot, in which she visited an elderly person who had no family. As it turns out, she and Jenny had developed a very special friendship, which lasted for many more years until Jenny’s passing. She even flew Jenny down to Florida for our wedding.

In any case, I told her that I had no dinner plans and that I would be happy to join the two of them for dinner. She looked at me with a somewhat unsettled expression, but agreed to let me join them for dinner. Jenny and I immediately had great karma; I think she saw me as a good life-mate for her Dorot friend.

After dinner, we took Jenny back to her apartment at 200 Central Park South and then I dropped the girl back at her apartment at the Beaumont at 30 West 61st Street, as I had a flight back that evening. When she got out of the taxi, I got out to see her off and said to her, “I would be very lucky to spend the rest of my life with you”. She looked at me very unsettled again and responded, “Hope to see you again one day”.

Well that girl was Joyce Ellen Siegel, and in fact I did marry her, and we have now been married for thirty-three blissful years.

I flew back to Canada, and that week I called Joyce every evening. I told her I was coming back to New York the next weekend, and I wanted to make arrangements to see her in the evenings and during the days. For some reason, Joyce felt that this was too much for her, and she agreed to only one evening. Disappointed but willing to accept that for now, I got us tickets to see Elton John at Madison Square Garden. We had a great time at the concert – or at least I did, and I hope that she did too.

After a while, I became too much for Joyce and she asked to cool the relationship. I was not happy about that at all. Thank G-d she finally changed her mind and we started dating again. During that time, I was working at the plant in Niagara Falls, and every Friday afternoon I would fly from Buffalo to Newark – on Peoples Express for $19 – and I would return every Sunday night. My close friend Warren Cole gave me the keys to his apartment and I slept on his couch every weekend.

Engagement December 1987

In December of 1987, I was invited to join Joyce at her nephew Matthew Spiegelman’s bar mitzvah in Miami Beach. By that point, I had already asked her Dad for permission to marry his daughter, and he had already granted the permission. I brought the ring with me and I had a plan to propose to her in the synagogue. On the Friday afternoon before the bar-mitzvah, I made up a story about having to pick up some prayer books at the synagogue and asked Joyce to join me for the errand. I had the ring with me. Unfortunately, I did not think about the fact that the synagogue might be locked, and it was and no one was there to open the door. Thus, I proposed to her on the steps of the synagogue, and she said yes!

Wedding June 19, 1988

Joyce and I were married in the clubhouse of the Polo Club in Boca Raton on June 19, 1988. It was the first – and maybe only – kosher affair ever at that venue. At the time, the Polo Club had the idea of expanding its business by offering kosher catering. For our event, they bought all new dishes and silverware, planning on using them in the future for more kosher events. However, to the best of my knowledge, they never did book another kosher event!

We were married by Rabbi Mayer Abramowitz, the rabbi of the Siegel family and a very close friend of Joyce’s father. Rabbi Abramowitz was a storied individual. He and Joyce’s father built Temple Menorah in Miami Beach which became a powerhouse in the community. They then sponsored and embraced Jewish Cuban refugees, who became a big part of the Temple Menorah community. In later years, Rabbi Abramowitz arranged and led tours to Israel for Jewish teens to bring them closer to Israel and Yiddishkeit. Thousands of teens were positively impacted by his work.

Rabbi Abramowitz’s daughter Dahlia designed and painted our ketuba, which still hangs in our home to this day.

My best man was Phil Lerner. Groomsmen were my brothers Michael and Jerry, and Ted Bigman and Michael Kann. Joyce’s sister Linda was her Maid of Honor, and her bridesmaids were Stacey Bender, Leslie Davis and Rhonda Sucher.

On the Friday night before the wedding, we had a big Shabbos dinner for all the out-of-town guests along with a roast of sorts. My friend David Blumberg gave a memorable speech.

Following the wedding Joyce and I flew to Hawaii for our honeymoon. We spent a few nights at each of the Kapalua on Maui, the Mauna Kea on the Big Island and the Waiohai on Kauai. We went bicycling down Mount Haleakala and took a helicopter ride over Kauai.

Living in Niagara Falls 1988 to 1993

For reasons that she will have to explain in her own book, Joyce agreed to move to Niagara Falls, Ontario, and we bought a house at 6447 January Drive in the Calaguiro Estates subdivision. We bought the house from Darlene Armstrong. It was a great bungalow house for a young couple. We furnished it with cool, colorful furniture. We got a black Joe leather glove chair that matched the one that George Steinbrenner had in his office.

It was common at that time for families to sponsor a live-in nanny from the Philippines, and we did so. When Joyce was pregnant with Jacob, we sponsored Melanie. However, Melanie arrived three months before Jacob did. Thus for three months, it was Joyce, me and Melanie living in the house!

Joyce got a job right away as a social worker at the Family and Children’s Services of St. Catharines and Niagara Falls. She enjoyed it, except that once a week she had to spend a day at the Welland General Hospital, which was a fair commute from our home, especially in the winter. Eventually she was able to get out of that one day a week and she took an additional part-time job at Lidkea Vos & Venema, a private counselling centre for families and children. It was rewarding and stimulating work.

Jacob was born at the St. Catharines General Hospital on September 8, 1989. Our obstetrician was Dr. Aaron Horwitz. Dr. Horwitz also delivered Rachel. He ran into legal troubles with regard to his practice but that was long after we had left Niagara Falls.

Rachel was born on June 23, 1991, also at St. Catharines General Hospital. Within a few weeks, she had contracted meningitis. It was Rosh Hashana, and we could not get hold of our pediatrician Dr. Peter McMain, because he was in shul. This was before the days of cell phones. We decided to take Rachel to Buffalo. She was treated there by Dr. Frank Mezzadri. She had to have a spinal tap. Thank G-d she survived and all was well, but it was extremely scary for several weeks. At that point, Joyce decided to stop working to take care of the children full-time.

When Jacob was four years old, we sent him to the Montessori School in St. Catharines. One day, he came home singing Jingle Bells. I said to Joyce, this doesn’t sound good to me. Joyce responded, wait until tomorrow, they are learning Silent Night Holy Night.

We decided that this was not good, and that Jacob should go to a Jewish Day School. The closest school was the Kadimah School in Buffalo, which was about a thirty-minute drive from our home and the plant, so it was a doable commute. In those days, it was easy and fast to cross the border. We visited the school, liked what we saw, and we decided to move to Buffalo so that Jacob, and then Rachel, could attend Kadimah. We already had some friends in Buffalo, Jeff and Robyn Zimmer and Michael and Carole Gold in Niagara Falls New York, and we were confident they would introduce us to others and we would make new friends. We started to look for a house in Amherst, a nice suburb of Buffalo, with the intention of moving there over the summer so that Jacob could start Kadimah in September.

One Sunday in March of 1993, after Uncle Reuben passed away, Joyce and I drove to Hamilton to pay a shiva call to Aunt Helen and her children. The shiva was at Aunt Helen’s house on Flatt Avenue in Hamilton. While we were there, a man by the name of Rabbi Morton Green walked in. We were introduced to him and spoke with him for a few minutes. We told him about ourselves and may have mentioned that we were living in Niagara Falls, but were planning a move to Buffalo so that our children could have a day school education.

Rabbi Green asked us to get in our car and come over to his office which was a few blocks away. I was very hesitant, as I had no idea what his motives could have been, but I knew that it was not anything I was remotely interested in. I reluctantly agreed to go, but said I had to get back to Niagara Falls soon so I would not be able to stay long.

We followed Rabbi Green over to the Adas Israel Synagogue at 125 Cline Avenue South. He ushered us into his office and he closed both doors. It was two hours later before Joyce and I left that office. Rabbi Green gave us an amazing speech, including the fact that the decision we were about to make would decide what type of people our grandchildren would be. He was very convincing, so much so that by the end of the two hours, we were no longer moving to Buffalo. We were moving to Hamilton, Ontario and enrolling Jacob in the Hamilton Hebrew Academy.

My commute would be forty-five minutes instead of the thirty-minute commute from Buffalo, but it was still doable. We decided to move to Hamilton. It is safe to say that looking back with the benefit of hindsight, Rabbi Green was one hundred percent correct. Joyce and I now have five grown children, all of whom are bright, caring, smart, educated, and Shomer Shabbos and mitzvos. Four of them are married to spouses of their dreams, and I am not worried about the last one!

Living in Hamilton 1993 to 2000

We moved to Hamilton in the summer of 1993. We sold our beautiful home in Niagara Falls, and we were certainly sad to leave my parents and Magdi Omama, and the close friends we had made there, especially Daphna and Allan Saks and Nancy and Frank Grottola, and Jacob was certainly sad to leave Ilan and Frankie.

Since we did not know the community in Hamilton, we decided to rent for a year to get our bearings. We rented a house at 130 Huntingwood Avenue off Governors Road in Dundas. Jacob started school at the Hamilton Hebrew Academy and I commuted to Niagara Falls. We quickly made friends, Debbie and Marty Strub, Mary Martha and Joel Starkman (z”l), Lila and Arnie Strub. In addition we had our cousins in Hamilton, Sandy and Joel Yellin, and Arlene and Richard Leibtag. We became part of a nice Dundas social circle.

We started attending the Adas Israel Synagogue on Shabbat mornings, and there we were welcomed wholeheartedly and quickly made good friends, most importantly Ettie and Danny Rosenberg, who had also moved to Hamilton when we did, Aliza and Cemmie Green and Faygie and Moshe Green.

Concurrent with our move to Hamilton, Rabbi Green opened a boys’ yeshiva high school. He built it with the intention of making it a world-class institution of Jewish higher learning, with the philosophy of Yeshiva University, combining study of Jewish texts along with a strong secular education. To start the school, Rabbi Green went to the head of the Rabbinical School at Yeshiva University (RIETS) and asked him for a list of the top five graduates of the school in that year. Rabbi Green’s offer was that he would give these rabbis, and their spouses for those who were married, free housing in Hamilton, free tuition for their children at the Hamilton Hebrew Academy, a nice wage, and most importantly, the opportunity to be a part of creating a world-class institution of Torah learning from the ground up.

Rabbi Green succeeded in attracting the top talent from the RIETS graduating class. Rabbi Aaron Selevan and his wife Leslie, Rabbi Stephen Richter and his wife Sharon, Rabbi Chaim Soloveichik and his wife Pircha, Rabbi Barak Saffer and his wife Honey, and Rabbi Brian (Buddy) Berkowitz all moved to Hamilton at the same time we did. It was a very exciting time to be involved in the Hamilton community. The yeshiva high school attracted a very nice sized opening class, as Or Chaim in Toronto was going through a fair amount of turmoil at that time and Toronto parents were looking for another option for their sons’ high school educations.

Joyce and I started spending more and more time with these Hamilton couples. We were enamored of their lifestyles. Their focus on chesed, kindness, doing good deeds, and their shunning of materialism, was attractive to us. We began to want to emulate them. The important part of the week was Shabbos and of course, none of these families drove on Shabbos. We lived about five miles from the synagogue and we drove there. At first, we parked our car on the street near the shul, but after a while we started parking our car around the corner, and then after that we started parking a few blocks away and walking to shul from there.

There came a point at which we decided that we wanted to be able to walk to shul on Shabbos. We lived in Dundas from August 1993 to August 1994. When our lease was up on Huntingwood after a year, we decided to move to the neighborhood in West Hamilton where the shul and the school were. We found a house to buy. It was a house owned by Doreen and Larry Goldblatt on 29 Wilmont Court, which was a terrific lot, but the house had gone into a state of disrepair. We bought the house and planned an extensive renovation. We enlisted the services of our cousin Richard Leibtag to do the renovation. Joyce worked with Richard and ended up almost rebuilding the entire home. It turned out absolutely amazing but it took the better part of a year to do.

During the time of the renovation, Pam Smye found us a home to rent at 10 Mayfair Place in Hamilton. It was an unusual rental to say the least. The home had been owned by a couple, the Rosenblatts, who had passed away about fifteen years previous. No one had lived in the home for that entire time, and nothing had been touched in the home since the couple had passed away. Even their combs and toothbrushes were still there in place where they had left them. The dishes were still in the dishwasher. Their son lived two doors down and seemed to be somewhat of a recluse.

The home stunk of mold, the windows not having been opened or the air on for all those years. We hired, at our cost – as the son would have no part of it – the services of a commercial cleaning company who did basically an industrial clean-up of the premises over the course of several days, and then we were able to move in. My mother’s cousin Irving Zucker, somewhat of a local celebrity, lived next door.

We lived on Mayfair Place from August 1994 to March of 1995. We moved into 29 Wilmont Court in late March of 1995. The house was at the top of the cul-de-sac and had four huge pillars at the front. We painted each of the pillars a different color: red, green, blue and orange.

There were many astonishing things about these couples’ lifestyles, but the one that grasped me the most was Shabbos. Being in the meat business, as I have described elsewhere in this book, meant that I was working from very early in the morning until late at night, and just never knew when the next disaster was heading our way. As a result, and I am sad to say this, from 1989 when Jacob was born, to at least 1993, Joyce did everything with regard to raising our children. I was either at the plant, or out of town drumming up business or taking care of a problem, or if I was at home, I was asleep on the couch as a result of my exhaustion.

As such, when we began to spend a little time with these families over Shabbos, I could not get over how focused the parents’, and particularly the fathers’, attention was on their spouses and their children. For twenty-five hours, these fathers were literally unable to do anything but focus on their families. I soon realized that this was an extremely enviable place to be in life. It seemed almost impossible for someone like me. Over time, I, and Joyce, learned more and more about it, and the more we learned, the more we wanted to be a part of this lifestyle.

It is no exaggeration to say that one of the reasons I am such a happy person is because of Shabbos. From Friday afternoon to Saturday night, all I can do is focus on my wife, my family, my community, my spiritual well-being and my relationship with my Creator. This has been an immeasurable blessing for me, and I believe, for my wife and my children as well. This is our twenty-five hours where we truly connect with one another without outside forces impinging on our time or attention. I am truly grateful for having discovered Shabbos. Every Thursday and Friday, Joyce prepares enormous meals for Shabbos, and we invite several families to join us for Shabbat for a long evening of eating, singing, and talking, and many weeks she repeats it all for lunch Shabbat day, and even for the third meal in the late afternoon. I truly look forward to it every week.

One tremendous benefit of our move to that neighborhood was the sense of community and bonding that we formed. When we moved to the neighborhood around the shul, we became a part of a group of families who all care for one another, help one another, rejoice with others’ successes and grieve with one another’s sorrows. Interestingly, Jewish law in effect creates the environment for this communal sense to flourish. Because one does not carry on the Sabbath outside of the boundary of the community, everyone lives within the boundary. Thus, homes within the boundary are highly desirable and their prices are inflated as a result of the demand. Therefore, the only people who would live there are people who want to walk to the shul on Shabbat. Those who are not members of the shul who live within the boundary can sell their homes at a premium and live in the same home a mile away for half the price. The upshot of this is that within the boundary, everyone knows everyone.

Thus, whether it was in Hamilton around the Adas Israel, or later in our lives in Thornhill around the BAYT, or in Boca Raton around BRS, it is common for friends to come over to our home uninvited all the time. And if someone is not seen for a day, others inquire to make sure everything is okay. There is no doubt in my mind that living within this boundary in such a caring environment has added significantly to my happiness and to the well-being of our family.

Many other aspects of these people’s lives looked very attractive as well; some took a lot of education to understand and appreciate. This book is not the place for an extensive review of how each of these – kashrut, mikvah, yom tovim – has impacted me (I hope to write a separate book on that subject soon), but suffice it to say that each of them has had almost as dramatic a positive impact on me and our family as has Shabbos.

Living in Thornhill 2000 to 2007

One of the greatest parts of our move to Thornhill was the relationship we developed with our Rabbi, Rabbi Baruch Taub. The impact he had on us was enormous.

I could write a whole chapter about memories of Rabbi Taub, but I will just mention a few vignettes that come to mind.

The first was from our first Shabbos in Thornhill. As new members of the community, we had the great honor of being invited for Friday night dinner to the home of Rabbi and Rebbetzin Taub. We were the only family invited that night and we felt so special. Moreover, very shortly after that, the Rebbetzin, Judy, became ill and they had to stop the policy of having new members to their home. It turns out that we were the last family to have that honor, and we have always cherished that. As a side note, the kids were really little and they did not want to sit at the table for too long. The Rebbetzin led them downstairs where there were a bunch of toys and games for them to play with. Unfortunately, they broke the drawer of the toy chest. That was embarrassing.

The second was when Joyce was sitting shiva for her sister Linda, who passed away in 2002. To mark the end the week of shiva, the person sitting shiva walks around the block of their home to symbolize their return to active communal life. Rabbi Taub did that with Joyce. Now I do not know what Rabbi Taub said to Joyce during that walk, but I do know that it was extraordinarily comforting and transformative for Joyce. She, and I, will always be grateful to Rabbi Taub for what he did for Joyce then and for the extraordinary role he played in our lives during the seven years we lived in Thornhill.

The third great memory I have was from one Shabbos morning when I was leaving the shul. I saw my friend Moishe Posner and offered to walk home with him. Moishe responded “Well, actually I am not going home now.” I asked, “Where are you going?” Moishe responded somewhat sheepishly, “I am going to Rabbi Taub’s house.” Seeing the sudden gleam in my eye, he asked “Would you like to join me?”, clearly hoping I would say no. I said, “Of course!” and walked across Clarke Avenue with Moishe to 69 Bevshire Circle. There we were met by Auby Diamond and Cyril Brenman. They were running around like busy bees. They were slicing vidalia onions, chopping eggs and lining up some crackers. We all sat with Rabbi Taub while he ate and gave us words of Torah. I really am not ably conveying the sense of awe that permeated the room, but it was an aura I will remember forever. It a real honor to be able to have been there.

One of the many highlights of living in Thornhill was learning with Rabbi Taub. His classes were enlightening and engaging. On a lighter note, the last memory I share is a vignette from one of Rabbi Taub’s classes. He told the following story about Tisha B’Av, and I quote liberally, “Judy was very ill and hospitalized downtown at St. Mikes. I spent the nights there with her, including Tisha B’Av. I was sitting on the floor next to her bed, reciting kinos, when the nurse walked in to check on Judy. The nurse saw me and said, ‘Rabbi, there is a chair here, you don’t have to sit on the floor’. I responded, ‘Yes, I do. I am sitting on the floor because I am mourning the destruction of our temple.’ The nurse’s affect turned and she responded, ‘Rabbi, I am so sorry to hear that. I have been so busy in the ward today that I haven’t had a chance to listen to the news!’”

Chautauqua Institution

For many years, the Chautauqua Institution has played an important role in our lives. The Chautauqua Institution is a 650-acre site on Lake Chautauqua in the southwest corner of New York State, between Buffalo and Erie, Pennsylvania. It started about 160 years ago and since that time has been a summertime center for spiritual, physical and religious rejuvenation. We found out about it because Opi and Omama had gone there for several years with some friends of theirs from Buffalo. They used to stay at the Athenaeum, the grand old hotel in the middle of the complex.

Over the course of the decades, we have stayed in almost every conceivable type of living arrangement possible at Chautauqua. Some years, but not often, we stayed in a hotel or motel, the Athenaeum, the Tally Ho Hotel, the Spencer Hotel. We often stayed at the St. Elmo, a condo complex right at the center of Chautauqua on Bestor Plaza. But most of the time we rented a condo or a single-family home. One year we stayed at a condo near the lake. The Zemskys lived across the street. He was in the meat business at the time; he worked with his father at Russer Foods in Buffalo; they were customers of ours. He later sold the business to Tyson and worked for Governor Cuomo on reviving Western New York.

One year the house we rented was a beautiful Japanese-inspired home. Other years we rented a huge home from Hugh Butler at 36 Hurst Avenue. My parents joined us at that home one summer.

We saw some great concerts at the Amphitheatre at Chautauqua, especially James Taylor, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Pete Seeger and Peter Paul and Mary. We also heard great speakers like Al Gore, David Hartman, David Brooks and Amy Chua.

The kids went to the kids’ camp and to the swim center. We took tennis lessons. One summer we rented a boat and went tubing. We got ice cream at Bestor Plaza with our tokens. We spent nice time in the library. One year the kids went golfing at the course across the street.

One highlight was always going to Boxcar Barney’s for ice cream, especially Moose Tracks. They gave huge portions. We shopped at the Tops in Mayville. But first we would stop at the Tops in Amherst and get some kosher food from Nissin Berg. Later we would stop at the Wegman’s across the street which was a really nice supermarket.

In later years, Chabad played somewhat of a role in our stays in Chautauqua, especially on Shabbos. Rabbi Zalman Vilenkin and his wife Esther were always very kind and welcoming. Originally, they lived on the second floor of one of the condo homes on the way down to the lake, but over time they raised enough money and built a Chabad House at 23 Vincent Avenue right on the brick walk. We went there for davening Friday nights and Shabbos mornings.

Rabbi Vilenkin’s wife’s father was Rabbi Nosson Gurary. He was the first Chabad shaliach in Buffalo, and my father was a big fan and a supporter of his. At Muller’s Meats, the only way to get to the office was to walk all the way through the plant, where one was seen by all the workers. It was an unusual, but not uncommon sight to see Rabbi Gurary walking through the plant on his way to see my father – without an appointment of course!

We became friendly with some of the other people there, in particular, Sol Messinger. Dr. Messinger was a child refugee from Europe and he was on the M.S. St. Louis, the ship that was refused entry into the United States. Each year he gave a speech about the plight of the Jews on that ship.

We also made some use of the Everett Jewish Center, which was built on the Chautauqua grounds in 2009. One year we took a course on the book Portnoy’s Complaint with Professor Bernard Avishai. He started the lecture by making a reference to raw liver. And then he said, anyone who does not understand this reference might as well leave now!

Ricky and Lucy

As a child, I was a big fan of I Love Lucy, and we have passed down that love to our children. Lucille Ball was born in Celeron, New York, which is just outside of Jamestown, New York. Jamestown is just down Route 394 from the Chautauqua Institution. Jamestown, once known as the “Furniture Capital of America” has tried very hard to leverage the Lucy connection in order to draw tourists to a town that otherwise has fallen on hard times. In addition to the Lucy and Desi Museum, there is a National Comedy Center which tries hard to attract comedy shows.

Joyce and I and the kids visited the Lucy and Desi Museum often during our stays at the Chautauqua Institution. We also purchased a great Lucy and Desi bench hand made by Kathy Callahan which has been in the front hall of all the homes we have lived in.

Years later, when I went into the art business, I signed a licensing deal with Lucy’s children, Desi Arnaz Jr. and Lucie Arnaz Luckinbill. We marketed a painting by Doug Bloodworth of Lucy’s Chocolate Factory and a painting of the Vitameatavegamin scene by Rich Conley.

To this day, much of the time when I walk into the house, I exclaim, “Lucy, I’m home!” in the same way that Ricky Ricardo (Desi Arnaz) did on the show.

Professional Sports: Buffalo Sabres and Buffalo Bills and Super Bowls

The Buffalo Sabres and Buffalo Bills played a large role in our family fun throughout the years. From the time Jacob and Rachel were four years old, we often went to “The Aud” to Sabres games and to Rich Stadium for Bills games.

We got our tickets from Kip Evancho. He always came through for us with amazing seats and we usually sat right behind or next to the players. Our kids would wear the regalia of players such as Michael Peca, Jason Pominville, Danny Briere, Thomas Vanek and of course Ryan Miller and Domenik Hasek.

When the Sabres would score a goal, I would pick Rachel up and throw her in the air in excitement. I thought we were both loving it. Years later she confided in me that in fact she was terrified during these celebrations and sometimes hoped that the Sabres would not score so that she would not get thrown in the air.

In 1999, the Sabres made it to the Stanley Cup Finals for the first time since 1975. The final series was against the Dallas Stars. The final game ended in triple overtime with a victory by the Stars on a controversial goal by Brett Hull in which he had his skate in the crease, which was illegal at the time. We were all devastated. We stayed in our seats for a long time and the kids cried (maybe the adult did too).

In 2006, the Sabres made it to the quarterfinals against the Ottawa Senators. Jacob and I went to all the games, home and away. We drove to Ottawa for the away games, and we sat on the glass right next to the Ottawa bench. Good times.

In 2004, I took Jacob to the Super Bowl at Reliant Stadium in Houston. In doing some research, I found out that on game day there are a lot of people selling tickets outside the stadium and if you just fly to the city where the game is being held and buy tickets on the street on game day, it is a lot cheaper than buying them from a ticket broker in advance. So that it was we did. Jacob and I flew down to Houston. When we got off the plane, there were a whole bunch of people in the airport dressed in Patriots gear, and as we were getting off the plane, they were asking us if we had any tickets for sale. Now I know from previous experience that when someone asks you if you have tickets for sale, that is actually code for we have tickets for sale. So I responded, yes, we are looking for two tickets. But in fact, they were actually looking for tickets, not selling tickets. That was disconcerting. We made our way down to the stadium, and there were thousands of people milling around, many of them looking for tickets. Now I know that at every venue, there is generally a place where scalpers are known to be situated. I asked around some more and found out where that place was. We made our way through the massive crowds toward the corner where the scalpers are known to stand. It was early, about 11 am, and the game was not until 6:30 p.m., so we both were worried, but not panicking. When we got to the corner, we found scalpers, but they did not have tickets, they were trying to buy tickets.

Hours passed with no success. Jacob and I looked at each other and said, you know what, we may not be going to this game.

We continued to ask around, and we finally found a scalper who said, yes, I have two tickets. They are great seats on the side in the lower bowl. We asked the price, he told us, and we said we will take them. I had brought enough cash with me to pay for them, but I thought that I would be better off paying with a credit card in case the tickets were counterfeit or in case for any other reason he was not able to come through for us. He then explained that his “partner” had the actual tickets in his hand, and he was at their “office” which was about ten miles away. He said that the partner would be making his way down toward the stadium in the mid to late afternoon and would give us the tickets then, but he needed our credit card information now to run the card through their system and collect the payment.

As I realized that this may be our only chance to get two tickets to this game, and also figuring that the credit card company would protect me in case of a fraud or scam, I decided to give this guy my credit card information, which he relayed to his partner, and they ran the payment on the card. He told us to come back around 4 p.m. to this same spot and by that time, the partner would be there and they would have our two tickets for us. We decided, however, to mill around the area, so as to be there in case the partner got there early, and so as not to lose sight of the ticket seller.

We waited and waited, no sign of any partner. At 4:30 p.m., we started to panic in earnest. The seller called the partner on his cell, and the partner said he was tied up in traffic but would be there. We really had no idea if there was even someone at the other end of the line, never mind if he actually had bona fide tickets. We waited some more, 4:45 p.m., 5:00 p.m., 5:15 p.m. We started talking to other people who began telling us stories going around of hundreds of people being turned away at the gate for having counterfeit tickets that would not scan.

At 5:45 p.m., the partner arrived and had two tickets in his hand. He handed them to us, with a business card, and said, have a great time at the game. We ran over to the stadium with the tickets, handed them to the usher at the gate, and believe it or not, the tickets scanned!

We made our way to the seats just in time for the national anthem, and had the time of our lives.

All told, I went to seven Super Bowls: 2004 in Houston with Jacob, 2005 in Jacksonville with Jacob, 2006 in Detroit with Jacob, 2010 in Miami with Izy, 2012 in Indianapolis with Izy, 2018 in Minneapolis with Avi and 2019 in Atlanta with Jacob, Aryeh, Izy and Avi.

In 2010, I took Izy to the Super Bowl for his first time. It was at Dolphins Stadium, just down the Turnpike from our home, so this was the game that involved the least amount of effort to get there. We met and took photos with Chris Berman and Tom Jackson. In 2012, I took Izy to Indianapolis for the Super Bowl for the famous game where Eli Manning beat Tom Brady.

In 2018, I took Avi to the Super Bowl in Minneapolis between the Philadelphia Eagles and the New England Patriots. We had tickets about fifteen rows from the field around the ten-yard line. When Zach Ertz caught the famous pass to win the game for the Eagles, it was right in front of us. We loved it. It was about thirty below zero outside but we were nice and comfortable. We stayed the night at Jerry’s friend Beth Pearlman’s house and left early the next morning. That defrayed the cost of the trip – ever so slightly!

In 2019, just after Rachel and Aryeh got engaged, I took Aryeh to the Super Bowl in Atlanta along with Jacob, Izy and Avi. Jacob and Aryeh flew in Sunday morning from New York and Izy, Avi and I flew to Atlanta Sunday morning from Florida. A great time was had by all.

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