My father, Dan Brodovsky, was born in Gruber, a few miles from Winnipeg, in 1903. His parents were Hyman Brodovsky and Rachel Zelbovich. The family moved to Teulon soon after his birth and to Bender Hamlet before he started school. They had the store in town (canned goods, dry goods, household goods, hardware) and lived there until around 1915, when they moved to Chatfield. Dan was the third brother. William was born about 1899, Michael in 1901, Dad in 1903 and Lou in 1905. The only one now living is my father.

My grandparents, Hyman and Rachel, with the three younger sons, emigrated from Canada to Oakland, California around 1922, when their house and store (then probably in Chatfield or Arborg) burned down. In Oakland he and the two younger sons had a furniture business, selling and perhaps manufacturing. In the early thirties, they moved to Sacramento, where they set up wholesale businesses, first in furniture, then in stationery and paper goods. They also established a conservative congregation in Sacramento that is important today in that community. My grandfather died in 1962, a successful and well-to-do business man. His two younger sons became wealthy, with Lou establishing a name for himself in Sacramento as both a businessman and a philanthropist before his death in 1997. The Brodovskys are still important in Sacramento, through Lou's two sons, Bill and Alan, who do corporate and real estate law. Both are active in the Jewish community and in the Sacramento business mileau. Michael left two daughters, Sue Ellen (now Sara Arsone, a free lance writer) and Carol Ann (Pinto), a social worker and teacher, who live in Los Angeles.

The oldest son of the Brodovkys, Bill, was already working in Winnipeg when his parents left Canada. In 1928 he married Nellie Smalley, who died in 2001. He and Nellie had three children: Eileen, Harvey, and David, born between 1929 and 1932. Bill himself died, apparently of a brain hemorrhage, in 1933.

Eileen was a nutritionist who worked in research until her marriage to Bob Garber around 1959. She and Bob had two children, Marian, a lawyer, and Steve, a political scientist; they are now retired, living in Princeton, NJ. Harvey married Barbara Hand, had two boys, Bill and Jeremy, became a prominent oncologist in Philadelphia, and is now retired. David is a specialist in ear, nose and throat in Winnipeg, married to Sheila Pierce. They have four children: Bill, Stephen, Sharon and Sidney, two of whom are physicians, one a social worker and one a business executive.

My Dad transferred from the University of Manitoba to the University of California, then went on to the University of California Medical School and finally started a general medical practice in San Jose in 1932. He married Beatrice DeVries, and they are still alive, together, healthy and mostly independent.

They had two daughters: my sister Joyce, born in 1942, and myself, born in 1936. Joyce, married to Bill Keckler, is a mathematician with a specialty in computer science. Her children are Steve, a professor in computer engineering at the University of Texas in Austin, and Sara, a chemical engineer for Exxon in Baytown, Texas. Joyce and Bill are now retired and live in San Jose.

I am a chemist and have an industrial consulting business in Mexico City. I have two grown children: Kier (a girl), a computer programmer in Portland, Oregon, who has one daughter, Elizabeth, now 13; and Tarl (a boy), who is a senior engineer for Sun Microsystems in Massachusetts. I am married to Bruno Schwebel, an Austrian engineer and artist who has lived in Mexico since 1942.

Hymie Brodovsky, who Dad says was killed in Chatfield, was playing around the box cars while they were switching cars. The engine gave one a push to couple to another, and Hymie was caught under a wheel. He was buried in Bender Hamlet because that was where the Jewish Cemetery was in the area. He was the son of Maisha and Hannah Brodovsky, who had two other sons (Bill and Dan) and two daughters (Alta and Clara). This family also immigrated to California in the 20's.

Dad says the schul in Bender Hamlet, which faced east, was divided into two sections: the front for men and the back for women. Everybody went to schul on Saturday; there were at least 50 in attendance then. Dad said he and his brothers (and the other boys in town) hated the high holiday services because the World Series were always on at that time, and they wanted to get out and hear the games on the radio. So they'd sneak out.

The school was at the other end of the block from the schul, about 1/2 mile from the Lavitt's house, across the street and to the West. It was one room and there were probable 30 or 40 children in the classroom. Dad remembers only the Weinstock kids and the Lavitts, but said that most of the 20 families in Bender Hamlet had children and that was where they went to school.

Everyday life for Dad consisted of going to school in the morning, from Monday to Friday, and to shul (synagogue) on Saturday. In the afternoons there were Hebrew classes, given by the Shochet (Kosher butcher who sort of doubled as a rabbi), at the shul. Also in the afternoon, at least once a week, Dad and/or his brothers had to take the horses and a cart into Inwood to pick up stores.

The family had chickens, at least one cow, and three horses. Two of these were for the cart and the third was used to ride.

The railroad came to Narcisse sometime between 1912 and 1914, making things a lot easier for his family, because that meant the ride to pick up stores was only two miles instead of 13. The store my family had in Bender Hamlet was turned over to Dad's uncle, Maisha Brodovsky, when they moved to Chatfield. Maisha later moved the store to Narcisse, where the railroad station was.