Covering Baltimore’s Jewish community for so long, there are times when I think I’ve reported on virtually everything under the sun. Along with profiles, features and news articles, I’ve written plenty of stories that, in retrospect, seem a bit inconsequential, obscure or trivial.
For instance, one of my first articles about the community was when I covered a “dog fashion show.” It seemed that the Jewish owner of a pet grooming salon in Carroll County decided to stage a community showcase for canine attire and couture.
I remember asking my editor — a seasoned newspaper veteran who’d worked for national publications — how in the world I was supposed to write a story about a dog fashion show. He looked at me blankly.
“Just play it straight,” he advised.
Over the years, I’ve written about plenty of other topics that might seem less crucial than, say, climate change or Middle East peace. Just a few that come to mind are whether or not Elvis was truly of Jewish lineage, where one can buy the best blintz or knish in town, if there really ever was a thoroughfare in East Baltimore dubbed “Jew Alley,” and individuals in the community who happen to have the same first and last names (and as a result are commonly mistaken for each other).
Not everything can be Watergate, right?
But as a result, I believe I have a fairly decent working knowledge of Jewish Baltimore and its history, including those items of a more arcane or ephemeral nature.
Still, every now and then, I get stumped or surprised by an odd tidbit of information. For instance, someone not long ago informed me that a member of the Baseball Hall of Fame is buried in a local Jewish cemetery.
In all my hubris, I told them, “That can’t be true. I would’ve heard that somewhere along the line.” Besides the fact that baseball history was practically my religion during my teen years, I’d never heard of any Jewish Baltimoreans among those immortalized in the hallways of Cooperstown.
As it turned out, I was wrong. Richard “Rube” Marquard happens to be buried in Baltimore Hebrew Congregation’s cemetery on Belair Road. The Cleveland-born Marquard, a pitcher inducted into the Hall in 1971, wasn’t Jewish himself. But he married Jeannette “Jane” Hecht Guggenheimer, a member of a prominent local Jewish family, so he’s buried here.
As they used to say in the shtetl, who knew?
Any journalist worth his or her salt will admit when they’re wrong about something and come clean. That comes with the job because, as everyone knows, journalists are far from perfect. Recently, a gentleman from Owings Mills named Harry Macks informed me of an error I made, and I’m eternally grateful.
In this column a couple of months ago, I referenced an old friend who told me years ago that he personally buried the late Baltimore-born singer Cass Elliot while working as a caretaker at a local Jewish cemetery. Decades later, I learned Elliot is actually buried in Los Angeles.
I assumed my old friend had either pulled my leg or was mistaken. But Mr. Macks, who volunteers as an archivist at Baltimore Hebrew, confirmed that “Mama Cass” was indeed buried at that congregation’s cemetery in Reisterstown for several years.
“I even remember seeing the grave,” he said, noting that Elliot was eventually reinterred in L.A. at the behest of her mother, Bess Levine Cohen.
The moral of this story is something my old editor told me about always making sure your facts are accurate: “If your mother says she loves you, check with your father twice.”
Sincerely,
Alan Feiler, Editor-in-Chief
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