The Beach. June 26, 1988 and Before.

Twenty seven years ago, on June 26, 1988, Tony and I got married at "the beach."  For me, "the beach" was always Wrightsville Beach, NC.  My maternal grandfather, Jack Goldstein came from Wilmington, NC and had a large set of siblings.  Many of them had "cottages" (really three story houses on stilts) at Wrightsville Beach on the sound side of Lumina Ave nue, where first-cousins and second-cousins, and eventually third-cousins met every summer.  I started going to the beach when I was a child because my mother's sister, Mirian Mann. had a cottage at the beach on the shore side of Lumina.  My Aunt Ba (my childhood name for her because my grandfather called her Bootsie, and "Ba" was my baby equivalent) had a cottage that belonged to her father-in-law, Joseph Mann.  Mr. Mann had three children--Sol, Etta Rose, and Bea--and each of his children had the use of the Mannn cottage for a month in the summer.  When my Aunt Ba had her turn at the cottage, she would have my mother and her children to stay with her.

My mother, my brotherBen and I on the right.  My Aunt Ba and her husband Uncle Sol and his family on the left.  

Wrightsville Beach is deep in my memory.  It is the place cousins and aunts and uncles and great-aunts and great-uncles gathered.

Goldstein Family Reunion at Wrightsville Beach, NC, early 1960s.

When Tony and I decided to marry we did it at Wrightsville Beach, the most beautiful and meaningful place in our shared history.  Our wedding weekend was perfect.  All Tony's family--brother and sisters and their husbands and wife--plus his Uncle Ted and Aunt Birdie came.  All my family--my sister Sandy and her family, my brother Ben and his family and my brother Steven plus my Aunts Clara, Rose, Annie, Jeanette and Anna and my uncles Able, and Marcus plus many of my Warhsauer and Mann and Offerman cousins--were there.  Tony's family stayed on the second floor of the Mann cottage; my family on the ground floor.  Tony's mother and Tony and I stayed at my mother's house in Wilmington. It was probably the happiest time in my life.

After my mother died in 1997, I went to Wrightsville Beach one more time.  It was sad.  Then my Aunt Ba died and the cottage went to other hands.  By that time my great aunts were gone as well. My sister and I started going to Sunset Beach, NC and later Holden Beach, NC with my sister's husband's family.  And now that tradition seems to be over too.

My memories of the beach are among the strongest and sweetest of my life and made even sweeter by the fact that I also remember it as the place Tony and I married.

My sister Sandy, my mother Harriet Somberg, my brother Ben and me at Wrightsville Beach.  My father took the picture.

 #WrightsvilleBeach
#Goldstein
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