My Visit to My Great-Grandfather Adolf Regenstreich's Grave in Ozone Park, Queens, New York 10-16-15

While I was in New York City for the About.com Expert Event annual conference, I decided to take the time to seek out the grave of my great-grandfather (my father Arthur Schneider's grandfather and his mother, my Grandma Fannie's father).

Adolph Regenstreich

Until recently, all I knew about Adolf Regenstreich was that he was the father who came from Romania of my Grandma Fannie Ragin Schneider.

My Grandma Fannie was one of the youngest of 8 children   The names of Adolf's children were Rachel (always called Rae), Theodore (nickname was Teddy), Molly, Dorothy, Clara, David (Dave), Fannie, and Sidney

The oldest sister was named Rae (short for Rachel) and Rae was actually Grandma's half sister since Adolf's first wife, Golde, died when she was very young.  Adolf remarried Esther after Golde died and Esther, like Adolf, died of tuberculosis when she was very young.  I seem to remember Grandma telling me that her older sister Rae and her other older sister Molly did most of the cooking!

When the siblings (with the exception of Teddy) moved to California, they changed and shortened their last name to Ragin. (My uncle Bobby told my husband that Adolf Regenstreich real name had been Abraham Jacob Levine, but to protect his family, he changed his name to Adolf Regenstreich so he could somehow avoid having to serve in the Romanian-Austrian army since men with Jewish sounding names were drafted first.)

Fannie Ragin (Regenstreich)

Rae's grandaughter, Luci Rollins Janssen, connected with me and my father recently.  She found us after searching through ancestory search websites!

Rae Regenstreich Rollins

During a very recent trip to Luci's home, I was shown a photo of my great-grandfather's gravestone and also given a copy of his death certificate.  He died in 1914 in New York City.

So....early on Friday morning, October 16, 2015, I made a call to find out exactly where in the Acacia Cemetery Adolf Regenstreich was buried.

First I was told abruptly, "Call back Monday," but when I told the person that answered the phone that I would not be in NYC Monday, I received a call from Susan (on her day off) who ran the office at Acacia Cemetery.  Susan "bent over backwards" to help me find my great-grandfather by asking someone named Marcia who was answering the office phones to search for my great-grandfather on the microfiche records. Susan then gave me detailed directions over the phone on how exactly to find Adolf in the very huge cemetery which is the largest Jewish cemetery in New York City!

After I talked to Susan, I got on a subway train in mid-town Manhattan and took a hour plus long subway ride to Ozone Park, Queens.  When I got off the train, I met and linked up with my study partner, Dena Leff, from Partners in Torah (Dena lives about 30 minutes from the Acacia Park cemetery), and together we found Yassir 41 where Adolf Regenstreich was burried. Dena explained that that area was a section of the Acacia cemetary that was for a certain synagogue.

We stepped into a huge space and began searching for Adolf's gravestone.  It seemed like a hopeless thing to do, since there were so many graves in that space.

For a moment, I thought I found the gravestone, but realized the grave I found was for someone named Harry Regenstreich, not Adolf.  (Was Harry a relative?  Maybe...I took a photo of Harry's gravestone which said he was 25 years old when he died in 1902.  My father says that Grandma Fannie's oldest brother Teddy stayed in NYC to take care of a relative or brother...was Harry Regenstreich related to that person?)

I just kept searching and searching and walked by gravestone after gravestone.  I was about to give up, but finally, I found Adolf Regenstreich's stone!  It was huge and was in the very center of Yassir 41, on the left and only 13 spots from the center entry!

I shook when I saw his stone and grave.

Jo Ann and Her Study Partner From Parners in Torah Dena Leff at Jo Ann's Great Grandfather's Grave

After taking many, many photos, Dena read some Hebrew prayers outloud and then she told me that I was supposed to talk to my great-grandfather and tell him about his family, so I began to talk and talk and told my great-grandfather about my Grandma Fannie and I told him all about his other children, Grandma's brothers and sisters, who I got to know well when I lived with Grandma in the late 1970s.




This was a very memorable experience, and was made even "more memorable" because Dena was there.  In the approximately 14 years I've studied with Dena and Partners in Torah, Dena and I have only met face to face three times:  In 2007 when she organized a "Spur of the Moment Bar Mitzvah" for my son Joel, in 2014 when my daughter Annabelle and I attended her daughter Shira's wedding, and on Friday, October 16, 2015 when I visited my great-grandfather's gravesite.  Dena and Partners in Torah made that experience so, so meaningful!  And...all three experiences were the best learning experiences ever!

Before we left, Dena instructed me to put a rock on top of my great-grandfather's gravestone to show that he had been visited.