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