Replacement Child
Authors: Judy L. Mandel
CHILD
REPLACEMENT
CHILD
a memoir
JUDY L. MANDEL
SEAL PRESS
Some names and identifying details of people described in this book have been changed to protect their privacy. This is a work of memory, and at times imagination, based on the true story of the plane crash depicted in the book and the author’s life experiences. The essential facts of the story are true.
Copyright text and interior photographs © 2009, 2013 Judy L. Mandel
Published by
Seal Press
A Member of the Perseus Books Group
1700 Fourth Street
Berkeley, California
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form without written permission from the publisher, except by reviewers who may quote brief excerpts in connection with a review.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Mandel, Judy, 1954-
Replacement child / by Judy Mandel.
pages cm
ISBN 978-1-58005-477-5
1. Families. 2. Grief. 3. Parent and child. I. Title.
HQ519.M356 2013
306.85—dc23
2012041941
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Cover design by Domini Dragoone
Interior design by
meganjonesdesign.com
T
HIS BOOK IS DEDICATED TO THE MEMORY OF MY SISTERS
:
Linda Sue (Mandel) Driskell, the bravest woman I ever knew, who taught me that anything can be overcome, and Donna Jo Mandel, who I wish I had known in life
A
ND
,
IN MEMORY OF MY PARENTS
:
Albert Alexander Mandel and Florence Margaret
(Schlesinger) Mandel
My heroes
I
AM OLDER
now than you will ever be.
Sometimes you come to me on the wind. A gentle whisper on a morning breeze. Not to frighten your little sister.
At first I didn’t recognize you, but I know it’s you. Walking to school on a crisp fall morning I hear music. Sometimes a tune.
She was just seventeen . . .
Other times a soaring trumpet or a wailing sax. Music from the trees, inside the clouds.
You point to everyday enchantments. Teach me to wallow in the small delights of this fleeting life.
THE ELIZABETH DAILY JOURNAL, WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 23, 1952
ELIZABETH, N.J
.—Elizabeth’s second aviation holocaust in thirty-seven days today had claimed at least twenty-eight lives . . . The ship plunged into the two houses near the southeast corner of South and Williamson streets at approximately 3:45 pm. Before firemen could subdue the roaring, orange flames that leaped nearly 100 feet into the rainy sky, three dwellings and a garage had been destroyed and a fourth house was damaged severely. Nearly a score of persons were homeless.
Killed on the plane were Captain (Thomas J.) Reid and all twenty-two others aboard. Police . . . announced the following list of Elizabeth persons missing and feared dead:
DONNA MANDEL, 7 years old, 310 Williamson Street . . . The hospitalized Elizabethians and their condition at 8 o’clock this morning at St. Elizabeth Hospital:
LINDA MANDEL, 2, of 310 Williamson Street, “poor.”
MRS. FLORENCE MANDEL, 35, her mother, shock and burns of both hands, “fairly good.”
. . . Mrs. Mandel picked up Linda, her clothes afire, and rolled her down the stairway to the street, her husband Albert Mandel said. Mrs. Mandel, her own garments ignited, attempted to struggle back into the house to seek Donna but was restrained by an unidentified man.
prologue
I
WAS BORN OF
fire.
The flames licked my mother’s kitchen clean.
It happened at 3:45
PM
on a foggy winter afternoon—January 22, 1952.