Visionary Voices
Interview with Nancy Greenstein
April 27, 2012
CHAPTER 1: CHILDHOOD
12:17:24:20-12:18:14:22
Lisa: Nancy, first I’ll introduce the interview by saying welcome, and my name is Lisa Sonneborn, and I’m here today with Nancy Greenstein at Temple University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on April 27, 2012. And also present is our videographer, Aggie Ibrahimi-Bazaz, and Mrs. Greenstein, Nancy, do we have your permission to begin the interview?
Nancy: You know, right now, I didn’t hear the question.
Lisa: No problem. Do we have your permission to begin the interview?
Nancy: Of course. Otherwise I wouldn’t be here.
Lisa: Thank you. Nancy, the first question I’d like to ask is when and where you were born.
Nancy: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Lisa: When?
Nancy: June 4, 1929. I’m going to be 83 in a few months.
Lisa: Happy birthday in advance.
Nancy: Thank you.
12:18:14:22-12:19:58:20
Lisa: I wonder, Nancy, if you could share with us some of your earliest childhood memories.
Nancy: Oh, my. Joining the library at a very early age. We didn’t have a car so we walked, you know, and that’s how I spent my summers, really, was going to the library and reading all the fairy tales. I was a very, very good reader of fairy tales, strong believer of fairy tales.
Lisa: Did you have a favorite fairy tale?
Nancy: Everything that ended happily ever after.
Lisa: I wonder if you can tell me a little bit about your mother.
Nancy: My mother? Was a typical homemaker. In those days, when you got married you did not go to work, so -- and I was born on their first anniversary. So she was very, very good homemaker. My parents were very devoted to us. I had a younger brother, three years younger, and it was a pleasure having my parents, and I’m always very thankful is what I had -- very loving, very giving, all the way up until when they were no longer here, and very great supporter of Robbie and whatever I was deciding to do. So I always was -- considered myself very fortunate that way. Then 15 years later my sister was born, so there’s a gap. My brother was three years younger, my sister is 15 years younger than I am. But still very devoted to each other. We’re best friends.
12:19:58:20-12:20:43:23
Lisa: I wonder, Nancy, if you have a favorite memory of your father?
Nancy: Oh, my father and I were extremely close. We both loved music, and he took me to my first concert at the Academy of Music when I was five. Jose Iturbi had just come over from Spain because of the Spanish Civil War, and that was my first introduction to classical music, and I’m still at it.
And we went to as many concerts as possible, and growing up I used to have a season ticket to Robin Hood Dell. And in those days, you could go by yourself. It was fine, and I lived for that in the summertime.
12:20:43:23-12:22:13:10
Lisa: I wonder, Nancy, you described yourself as a great reader, and a believer in fairy tales.
I wonder what you envisioned for yourself as a young girl, for your own future.
Nancy: Seriously, I wanted to be a nurse growing up, and my grandfather was -- I was the oldest grandchild. His granddaughter was not going to be a nurse. He had been a patient in the hospital. In those days, nursing was not the way it is today. Nurses did a lot of grunge work, and he didn’t see his granddaughter doing things like that. So -- and I listened, and of course met somebody from my graduating class from high school, and she loved it, and my parents said okay, next year you can do it. In the meantime, I heard about medical technology and applied to Hahnemann [Hospital]. They accepted me -- I had to wait until I was 18 before I could start everything.
Lisa: But at 18 they accepted you before you had even gone to college.
Nancy: I didn’t go to college. They accepted me without college, one of the few that they accepted me without college. So -- however, there was a caveat. Because my religion -- if I didn’t work out, there wouldn’t be another one after me.
12:22:13:10-12:22:13:10
Lisa: And how did that relate to your religion?
Nancy: Oh well, you know how -- it happened before I even graduated high school. When I went for an interview for a typist clerk, and afterwards, my father said, “Well they don’t hire Jews”, which I didn’t know about. But even Bell Telephone at that time didn’t hire African American, didn’t hire Jewish people. So my brother -- I guess I’m going backwards a little bit.
My brother was younger, three years younger, and in those days, it was thought that if somebody was going to go to college, it would be the male because he would be the provider all his life. And since I was close in age, that he should go, and I couldn’t go. But I worked for a year at Blue Cross as a typist clerk, and got the money together to go to Hahnemann, and there were other Jewish people after me. So I’m going back and forth.
Lisa: That’s the way memory works.
CHAPTER TWO: MARRIAGE AND FAMILY
Lisa: We’re going to jump ahead a little bit, Nancy, and I wanted to ask you a little bit about your own family and if you married or had children.
Nancy: I’m married. I married in 1955 and Robbie was born two years later and Joanne was born two years later -- ’55, ’57, and ’59. It’s very easy to remember.
So yes.
12:22:13:10-12:25:28:04
Lisa: Can you tell me a little about your husband?
Nancy: He was a bit older than I am, and -- but we seemed to fit, and we both had the same crazy sense of humor, and we both enjoyed the same things when we were able to travel.
Robbie, I think, was -- let’s see, ten before we would take a trip, and we -- I’ll never forget the first time we went to Italy and we had gone to Florence straight from the airport, and they took us on a tour, a little bit of a tour, because the luggage had to be taken off the bus and transferred to the rooms. We were in Michelangelo Park and it was about 5pm in the afternoon, and it was just so beautiful. You just stood there and just enjoyed everything, and we had that togetherness that we both loved beauty, and we didn’t have to talk. We just fit together that way.
So whenever we could, we went to London one time on a Thanksgiving weekend, from Wednesday to Sunday, through Temple Alumni, went to Denmark that way, went to Greece that way. So my parents would come and sit for us. So we did all this, a week at a time. Each year was a week. So thank heavens for my parents.
12:25:28:04-12:27:40:29
Lisa: You mentioned that you have two daughters, Robin and Joanne. I wondered if you could tell me a little bit about them.
Nancy: Well, Robbie is the first born, and I was told that when she was born that she was -- perfectly normal, healthy baby, and the pediatrician at that time was a specialist, a blue baby specialist, and said, oh you Jewish mothers, the way you take care of your children, she’ll grow up to be a very healthy baby. And it wasn’t until about 18 months later that we were at the old Children’s Hospital, looking for answers as to why she wasn’t developing properly. And he happened to pass us in the hall, and asked why we were there, and we told them, and he said, well he wasn’t surprised, it was obvious. So we had seen him when she was three months old, and he said, oh she’s fine. So that was the beginning of looking for answers.
And she was a good baby, and we did get an answer. In those days you were diagnosed as either a Down syndrome or brain damage. They didn’t know anything about any other syndromes, and we were told she was brain damaged. I still can picture my husband and I walking out of the neurosurgeon’s office just crying, you know. Especially with your first born, you know, everything is -- even though I had a background of medical issues -- I was a medical technician -- and worked the hospital for five years.
But when you become pregnant and have your first child, you are innocent. You are very naïve, and it was just so traumatic and cried for a long time. And then you set about looking for what can you do about it, and that was a long journey.
12:27:40:29-12:29:36:14
Lisa: Nancy, we’ll certainly ask you about that journey today, but I’m curious about something you said. You said the pediatrician initially who saw Robin and said, oh you’re a Jewish mother, she’s fine, don’t worry, later on at another meeting, said that her disability was obvious from the start.
Nancy: That something was wrong. Yeah.
Lisa: I wonder how you felt about --
Nancy: You feel betrayed. I said, why didn’t you let us know then? Well, he thought it would be very hurtful. Well it’s hurtful at any time, but at least you can be prepared. It’s when things are not happening, when she’s not sitting at eight and a half months without support, and -- but she looked fine. You know, with a little button nose and a rosebud mouth and curly hair, and just with such a sweet smile, and -- but however she went from sitting to standing -- nothing in between. She never crept and she never crawled, and that had to be taught later on, so with everything that goes along with as babies learn to creep and learn to crawl, there are other things that are going on developmentally, and we were not aware of that. It’s unbelievable.
You’re so naïve when these things happen, and you don’t know where to turn, because there’s nobody to turn to. But we had a marvelous pediatrician, the second one, who was Chief of Pediatrics at Einstein Northern Hospital, and who worried about everything. And wherever we went looking for some help and we heard about things, he would call and raise the questions and find out how qualified they were in trying to help. So I’m most appreciative of that.
12:29:36:14-12:33:54:04
Lisa: Nancy, I’ll certainly ask you more about your daughter, because certainly her disability changed the course of your life. But while we’re talking about your children, I wondered if you could tell me a little bit about your daughter Joanne.
Nancy: Joanne, two years younger, and I used to say I had both ends of the spectrum.
Robbie’s was special needs and Joanne was at the other [end]. I didn’t have an average child -- very, very bright, and that was it. She was quick in everything, understanding everything, and I always felt it was a shame that she didn’t come first. She would have had two years of us unconditionally, without always having to be considered -- though I felt I could divide myself in half. That’s why we didn’t try for a third one, for the boy. It was up to us to have the boy in the family. He had two brothers, and they all had girls, and so it would have been up to us to have the son. And I would have liked to have a boy. But we thought that with two, you could cut yourself in half. With three, somebody would have suffered, and we didn’t want to do that. And she’s a delight, always as a little one, going to dance classes, five, and sending her to -- we believed in affording them all kinds of experiences to see what they enjoyed doing, you know -- ballet and art class and whatever else she was interested in, that kind of thing, to find out where her interests were. Very outgoing, and we lived in a neighborhood that had quite a few children that all went to the same elementary school, all went to the same Hebrew school, and so there was a group there. It was a very close group. So we’re very, very good friends today, very, very good friends, and I have a delight in my granddaughter. So we’ve done the same thing with her.
She went to see the Degas exhibit when she was seven months old, and so we’ve gone to the [Philadelphia] Art Museum ever since that time, and she has a little bit same weird taste of art that Joanne has -- Salvador Dali, what’s her name, Frieda -- married to Diego Rivera.
Lisa: Frieda Kahlo.
Nancy: Yeah. And so they bought that, posters, and Arielle wanted the poster of the boot, and they had an argument who was going to have it. So I had a friend of mine who was going the last day of the exhibit. I said, please do me a favor, get me a poster of the boots.
So even when we just went to the Van Gogh exhibit -- what was it, the day after Easter Monday, whatever the date was, we went this time because she was off from school. And so she’s been going quite often, whenever its special. And so it’s going on. It’s in the genes. It’s been passed on from grandmother, by father, to me, to Joanne, and now to Arielle.
And Robbie loves music, and she does not like cartoons. She needs the human face, and I’ve taped a lot of the VHSes for her, of the Pavarotti concerts. She loves the concerts. The operas, she doesn’t like. The concerts, she loves the classical concerts. So that’s what she listens to. And I have one last tape now for her -- cassette tape. You can’t find them anymore, and I’m trying to get somebody to get me some of the DVDs for her. She’s an aficionado of Lawrence Welk, so we watch that every weekend, every Saturday and Sunday, he’s on TV. So -- and she comes in, and she sits down on an ottoman and she has her ear plastered to the TV so she can watch. And she knows. So they do love music.
12:33:54:04-12:38:34:15
Lisa: Sounds like you have a wonderful group of women in your life.
Nancy: Oh yeah, oh yeah, very fortunate, really.
You have no idea how I feel about that, the support system that I have -- very loving.
Lisa: Nancy, I’m wondering how your family reacted to Robin’s disability once it was discovered.
Nancy: My parents were devastated, but certainly were there supporting us all the way through, and at a certain point, Robbie, we went to the Institute of The Human Potential. She was about ten. We were suggested to that by her neurosurgeon, and they always were there to “pattern”. Whenever anybody -- you had to have volunteers to help. We were lucky, we did it as a three person team, and if somebody could not make it, especially on the weekend, then they were there, my father always, my father was always there. I don’t know how I would have survived without them.