Chapter 2

5:30 in the morning is never a good time for the telephone to ring. 5:30 on a Monday morning the week of law school final exams is the worst possible time to be awakened by a ringing phone. I’d been studying all night and was half awake when I picked up the receiver and was instantly wide awake when I heard mom’s sobbing so hard she could hardly get the words out.

"Your father filed for divorce! I was served with the papers this morning. I don’t know what I’m going to do "

I half hoped that I was still asleep and the phone call was only a nightmare that I would wake up and find that dad was still in New York and everything was back to normal. That hope shortly vanished and was replaced by all too real anger. Whatever Gail’s intentions were, my immediate concerns were with mom.

Having grown up the Depression era of the 20's and 30's, my mom’s family was nearly impoverished. She was the youngest of three children and two step children. Her mother had died when she was a baby, her father remarried so that the State Welfare agency would not take away his children. My grandfather did his best to support his wife and five children, but times were very difficult and money and food was in very short supply.

My parents married in the early fifties and both worked very hard to make the family business Cohen’s Bakery, a success. Believing my father could have "married better", his family never accepted mom as a suitable wife and they never failed to remind him of this fact causing a huge division in our family. As hard as my mom worked to create a loving home for myself and my father, the influence of my dad’s family and their continuous criticism of his life created a rift between my parents that only grew larger throughout the years. Now this rift threatened the very existence of our family unit and destroy my mother.

There was no choice but for my mother to hire an attorney. Unfortunately living in a small town, there were few attorneys who didn’t know or at one time or another hadn’t represented my father in some manner, so there was a conflict with anyone my mother knew representing her. Mom’s future looked as if her worst nightmare was about to come true. She was terrified of losing her home, all of her life’s savings and return to a life of poverty. I tried to assure her that was not going to happen, but childhood memories are difficult to overcome.

Somehow I managed to get through exam week and passed all three of my law school courses; Criminal Law, Torts and Contracts. None of which covered the complexities of New York divorce law. At the time I was working for a family law firm in Thousand Oaks, California, but they were of little help because of the vast differences between California and New York laws. The best I could do for mom was be on the next plane to New York. I had planned on attending the New York State Elks convention that weekend, so I had my plane ticket in hand for May 14^th. I never made the convention.

It is hard to explain the spectrum of emotions I felt when I walked into my parent’s house the night of May 14^th. What was suppose to have been a joyous visit attending the convention with my dad, had been turned into a funeral, without a body. Mom was sitting at the kitchen table, a location of many happy family celebrations, anniversaries, birthdays. In my mind’s eye I could see my children sitting around that very table from the time they were infants in high chairs to the previous Thanksgiving only six months ago. To see my mother in tears, looking at papers accusing her of abandonment and abuse was more than I could stomach, but I had to be strong for her sake, even as I was emotionally falling apart.

After eating a five course meal my mom insisted on preparing, I began reading over the action for divorce. My first comment was that the signature on the complaint was not my father’s. (Appendix, Page 4). I’ve seen my father’s signature on many documents and whoever signed these papers was either not my father, or he was not in the normal state of mind when he signed them. The accusations were ludicrous and I assured my mother that we’d contest all the allegations and the case would be dismissed for lack of cause. This would have been the procedure in California, but unfortunately we were not in California, and I soon realized it was going to take a lot more than a simple motion to dismiss to make the case go away, especially when I read Gail’s affidavits attacking my mother which were attached to the complaint.

We made an appointment with the one attorney in Ellenville who didn’t know my father and he proceeded to go through the case, after mom paid him a hefty retainer. We went through each item on the complaint, both my mother and I were in shock. Did my father really believe what he had signed? The papers incorrectly identified me as Susan Westmiller, accused my mother of depleting an account in an irrevocable family trust and, among other accusations, his "sworn testimony" stated he was released from a New York City hospital after a triple by-pass operation in 1998, and went home by bus! Unless I’m a bus driver, dad knew I had flown to New York and drove him home the day after the New York Yankees won the World Series.

I knew my father would never believe these vicious lies unless he was being influenced by someone else, but without any way of contacting him, I was helpless and I was angry. Even though I understood dad’s stroke had effected his capacity to reason, and he would never had accused me of such horrible acts, the emotional side felt betrayed, hurt and extremely angry. I felt as if he not only filed for a divorce from my mother, but from me, his only daughter and his grandchildren as well. The fifty year old adult that I was needed to be strong for my mother, but the child that grew up in that house felt like a five year old who’s daddy left and was never coming home. I woke up many times throughout that night expecting to hear the garage door open and dad coming home from work. The silence was deafening.

A few days later I phoned my daughter Tandy who was living in Tulsa, Oklahoma working at the Spartan College of Aeronautics. I told her about the divorce action and how I couldn’t contact dad because the place he was staying would not let me talk to him. Tandy offered to fly to Florida and see him in person. She would take a few days off of class and could be in Ft Lauderdale in a few hours. I told her that was a great idea, gave her the address of the Newport Beach Retirement Community and told her to call as soon as she talked to you. I also gave her the phone number of a very good friend of mine, Vic D’Alessio, who I had kept in touch with since high school. He lived in Sunrise, a few miles from Fort Lauderdale airport. I also called my Aunt Kay, my mother’s step-sister and uncle Phil Palent, who also lived in Sunrise and asked them if Tandy could stay with then for a few days while she was in Florida. Uncle Phil immediately said "of course", (mom’s side of the family had always been wonderful!).

I was confident that when my father saw his granddaughter, she would be able to undue all the damage my cousin had done, convince him to drop the divorce action, and come home.

She never got the chance.