May met Bernie when she was barely 18 years old.  They met because of a burlesque dancer.  How did that happen?

In this section, you will read all about May and Bernie:

  • What was Bernie’s childhood like?
  • What was May’s childhood like?
  • How did May and Bernie meet?
  • Where was Bernie during WWII?
  • Where and when did they get married?
  • Take a look at their Wedding Photo Album
  • Read the congratulatory telegrams they received for their wedding.
  • Look at some of their honeymoon photos.
  • What was life like for Bernie and May after they got married?
  • This section also contains the poetry that Bernie wrote during WWII.
  • Learn about Bernie’s siblings, Arthur and Mildred.

Use the links in the header menu to navigate through these pages.

Updates:

In July of 2022, this section was updated with new photos, documents, letters, and information. The following pages were updated:

  • Bernie – added a lot of new documents, including information about his business, and letters and photos
  • May – added new pictures and documents, including a photo of her kindergarten class
  • How They Met – added some new pictures of May
  • WWII – added all the places he served, discharge information and additional pictures and documents
  • WWII Photo Album – added 5 new photos
  • Poetry – added a letter explaining the reasoning behind some of the poems Bernie wrote
  • The Wedding – added information about the wedding photographer
  • Arthur – added a lot of new photos, school records, and other information. Created new pages for
    • Lois
    • Their wedding album pictures
    • Their 25th wedding anniversary party pictures
  • Mildred – added new photos and information. Created new pages for
    • Manny
    • Harvey

In addition, I added new ways to get to Bernie’s siblings, so now you have 3 choices. You can still get to them from May and Bernie –> Bernie’s Siblings. Now you can also get to them from the Blieden menu –> Harvey’s and Gussie’s Children and from the Abramowitz menu –> Gussie’s and Harvey’s Children.

Over the last 2 or more years, whenever I visited siblings or cousins, I suggested we go through their old photos. We actually had lots of fun doing this! If I couldn’t visit in person, I pestered people to look through their old photos and documents for me. It is amazing how much history they never realized they had in their posessions. In this section, I used photos, documents, letters and other momentos from the following people. I can’t thank them enough!!!

  • My siblings
    • Ira Blieden
    • Avra Tietze
    • Mavra McCann
  • My first cousins
    • Andy Blieden
    • Amy Blieden
    • Harvey Rich, Ph. D. – sadly we lost Harvey in March of 2022. However, when I last visited him in CA in 2018, he found all of his old photos and let me look through them
      • Magnhild Lien, Ph. D., Harvey’s wife
      • Jessica Rich, Ph. D., Harvey’s daugther
  • Elizabeth Stephens, daugther of Jud Bricker, my father’s first cousin