Abe Simon

Last edit of this page 2024.MAR.11

This account was written by Abe Simon’s son, Gary Simon.

Abe Simon is the subject of many amusing anecdotes; click here to view; last edit 2021.FEB.27.

Abe wrote a regular news column about Shickshinny High School; last edit 2022.JAN.04.

Letters from Dad in 1942 and 1943 have survived. There is also one letter from 1956. Click here to read those letters; last edit 2023.AUG.11.

Click here to see documents about his military service from the National Personnel Records Center; last edit 2024.MAR.11.

He was born on Yom Kippur in that year.  It can be confirmed that October 10 in that year after sunset would be Tishrei 10, Yom Kippur.   The link to the western calendar was not made correctly.  He had gone through childhood thinking September 10 was his birthday.  In the year of his bar Mitzvah, 1926, the cross-checking showed that he must have been born on October 10.

So what’s it like to have a bar Mitzvah on Yom Kippur?   The only story I ever heard about this was that he and his father stopped for a snack on the way home from services.

We have many recollections, photos, and stories about him.  He grew up in a family of seven children in Mocanaqua, a tiny town squeezed between Pennsylvania’s Susquehanna River and the coal-producing hills.  The only Jewish families in town were the Simons and the Lustigs, and later the Strick family. There were other Jews in Glen Lyon, about seven miles away.  The nearest synagogue was eighteen miles away in Wilkes-Barre, along with the only source of kosher meat.

The book “The Jews of Wilkes-Barre” devoted two paragraphs to Abe Simon. The author is Marjorie Levin; the book was published in 1999 by the Jewish Community Center of Wyoming Valley.

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Several miles down the river from Glen Lyon, the Simon and Lustig families, and later the Stricks, lived in Mocanaqua. Abram Simon described a pleasant life in the tiny town (population 1200), though his parents died in 1929, leaving 15-year-old Abe and two younger sisters in the care of four older siblings. [NOTE: Two of those four, Edith and Esther, had married and moved away.] There was no synagogue nearby, so the family went to Holche Yosher for the holidays, staying overnight at the Holtzmans’ on Lincoln street. When the children were saying Kaddish for their parents, they drove to Wilkes-Barre every weekday, and had Shabbat minyan at the Racusin home in Shickshinny, where Mr. Strick read the Torah for the Racusins, Simons, Lustigs, and Kleins. Abram Simon wen to public school in Mocanaqua and Shickshinny, and studied Hebrew after school in Nanticoke, taking the train and, often, a live chicken intended for the shohet.

Jews in Mocanaqua had mostly positive relationships with their predominantly Catholic neighbors. As a boy, Simon did yard work at the church, because doing so was neighborly. The church, in turn, offered prayers for its Jewish friends, and a Polish priest gave Hanukah treats to the Jewish children. And, when the church planned an event celebrating its 75th anniversary, Simon was asked to be toastmaster; the church would provide a kosher meal. In high school in Shickshinny, though, the principal tried, unsuccessfully, to block Abe’s receipt of an award. And Sam Lustig deflected a “Christ-killer” taunt.

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Abe was the son of Jacob Simon and Kate Swiersky Simon.   Stories about the parents will be given another place.  Kate went through ten pregnancies.  Two died in infancy, Philip (also called Pete) died as a teenager, and the other seven lived to adulthood.  The sons were Nathan, the oldest, and Abe.  The five daughters were Edith, Esther, Dora, Ida, and Ruth.

Abe’s childhood years were spent in Mocanaqua, Pennsylvania, living above the family store. 

The Simon family story is centered on the family house and store, as the large family was raised in this home.  Jacob and Kate moved to this house sometime between 1900 and 1902.

Their first child was Nate, born in Reading, Pennsylvania, in 1900.  The second child was Edith, born in the house in 1902.

This was at the center of town, the intersection of Main Street and Pond Hill Road.  The Church of St. Mary was just across the street.

In 1929, Kate contracted an illness and died.  She was in her early fifties.  A few months after Kate’s death, Jacob hanged himself in the basement of the house.  He was discovered by the two youngest sisters, Ida and Ruth. 

Dad graduated from high school at age sixteen.  The school was in Shickshinny, the bigger town just across the river.  As he told the story, he was the smartest in his graduating class.  He was always proud of the fact that he graduated. 

Abe graduated just after the death of both his parents.  This was certainly a time of crisis, but no stories exist about his coping with tragedy.  

We have many facts about Dad’s childhood and certainly many things from his later life.  We seem to know nothing at all about his life between age sixteen and age twenty-eight, when he enlisted in the army during World War II.  I just don’t know what Dad did during those years.  Perhaps his adventures were too boring or too scandalous to talk about.  I’m hoping for scandalous.  His military service ended with a medical discharge after a few months of service.  This was attributed to an ulcer. 

Letters from Dad in 1942 and 1943 have survived. Click here to read those letters, which have great detail about his time in the Army.

Click here to see details of his service from the National Personnel Records Center.

Following his time in the army, he ended up in Tampa.  His older sister Esther married Isidor Wohl of Tampa, and Esther was also caring for Ruth, the youngest sister.

Abe and Inga moved back to Pennsylvania, and he worked in the Mocanaqua store with his brother Nate.  They ran their auto parts business and new car dealership from the original family home.

He and Inga lived at various addresses in Wilkes-Barre.  Their first residence was an apartment on South Franklin Street;  this was their residence when I was born in 1945.  They moved soon after that to a rented duplex on South River Street, their home when my sister Kathy was born in 1947.  Their next residence, also a rental, was 85 Maffett Street.  The big move came in 1953, to a home they purchased at 233 James Street in Kingston. 

Inga died of a cerebral hemorrhage in 1959, at the shockingly young age of 34.  For several months, Inga’s grief-stricken mother lived with the family to help Abe with the two children.

Months later, Abe found Fay Landau, who lived around the corner.   Fay had lost her husband a couple of years before.  They had a son Michael, born in 1953.  Fay and Abe married in December of 1960. 

Michael was seven years old at the time and was adopted by Abe.  The merged family of five moved into the house on James Street.  The oldest child (that’s me!) started college in 1962, and the fourth child in this his-hers-theirs family was born in January of 1963.  That was Laurie.

Eventually Nate retired from the business, leaving my father Abe as sole proprietor.  My sister’s husband Ron Lieberman became his partner in 1972.  It was a good match, as Ron’s new ideas were a complement to the store’s traditional methods.  Over time Ron realized the auto parts business in a dying remote Pennsylvania town was not the path to a great future.  He pulled out in 1987, and Abe retired later in the year.  He was 74 years old.   Kathy and Ron opened “Basically Bagels” in Kingston, and that eatery became a popular local spot.

Three of the four children married and moved away, leaving just Kathy and Ron and their immediate family in the Wilkes-Barre area.  When business issues became severe for Kathy’s family, they relocated to Atlanta.  Fay and Abe now had no children in town, and they decided in 2002 to move to an apartment in Blue Ash, Ohio, around the corner from Laurie and her family.   Eventually Abe’s health declined. 

As Dad declined, he was cared for by hospice people.  When he became too sick to remain at the apartment, the hospice caregivers came to move him into their facility about a mile away.  As he was being placed into the vehicle, he said “Hospice must be a good place.  I hear that people are dying to get in there.”

He passed away in 2007, just a month short of his 94^th birthday.

One would think that a funeral for a person who moved to another state in his 90s would be lightly attended.  It was not.  Relatives came from distant places for the funeral of their beloved Abe.

Fay remained in their apartment until 2013.  She lived at Cedar Village, a Jewish senior citizen home in Mason, Ohio, until her death on October 27, 2021.

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