To the legions of Jewish communal planners who sought to get their lecture, dinner, ceremony or other worthy occasion listed in the pages of The CJN, Miriam Herman was the soothing voice on the other end of the telephone. “All right,” she would calmly advise before taking down the date, time, place, and other details with a red pen on canary-yellow paper. “But speak slowly. I’m a slow writer.”
She may have been slow but she was thorough – and hardy. For 32 years, Herman was the face, voice and reliable tabulator behind The CJN’s popular events listing pages, What’s New.
She died Nov. 7 in Toronto at the age of 92.
At its busiest, Herman’s column sometimes ran three jam-packed pages. It was her job to list, chronologically, and with enough advance notice, details of every talk, class, seminar, luncheon, synagogue program, names of speakers and machers, and contact phone numbers of every event called in. These could number up to 100 a week, and her phone never stopped ringing. She loved to tell callers it was free of charge (but didn’t much like saying she had no control over whether the paper would cover their event, though even that was delivered with grace).
She graduated from the typewriter to the computer with relative ease.
Recalled as a refined, elegant lady, immaculately attired, hair and makeup perfect, and quick with a smile and kind word, Herman was known widely by her nickname, Bubbles. The moniker was earned because she blew bubbles as a baby but could have come by virtue of an effervescent personality.
Friends, loved ones and colleagues often marvelled at how she maintained such a cheerful, optimistic demeanour given the incredible hardships she had endured. After a long and harrowing battle, her beloved daughter, Meta, died of multiple sclerosis, and she was widowed a remarkable four times.
Thus, her surname became a bit of a conundrum.
“When I called her at her office, I always had to hesitate for a moment to figure out whom to ask for,” eulogized her daughter, Thea. Asking for “Bubbles” or “Miriam” was easy, but her daughter employed the formal “Mrs.”
“She continued to use the name Miriam Herman in her column, since that was the name she had when she started out [at the paper],” said her daughter. “After she married Leon [Bookman], she became Bubbles Bookman – but Herman remained her pen name. And then, when she married Cyril [Rotenberg], she kept the name Bookman for legal purposes but used Rotenberg in her social life.
“I have no idea what name I eventually used, but I had no problem reaching her. No doubt the staff at The CJN were well used to it.”
“Those of us who had the pleasure of working with Bubbles consider ourselves richer for the experience,” Gary Laforet, the former general manager of The CJN for most of Herman’s time at the paper, said. “She was a uniquely kind and caring lady and she will be missed.”
Herman’s column was “always a must read [and] reflected her love of the Jewish community,” said Patricia Rucker, editor of The CJN from 1989 to 1994. “She wrote with accuracy and grace, and her callers knew that she cared about every event. She was a great lady, and a joy to work with.”
She was born in Toronto in 1921 to Russian immigrant parents, Bessie and Isaac Hamill (known affectionately as “Bamil”), a dentist who weathered the Depression. Asked by her mother what she learned on her first day at school, the young girl replied that she learned her name was Miriam, not Bubbles.
After attending Oakwood Collegiate with a group of Jewish girls who remained good friends for the rest of their lives, Herman decided to go to nursing school in New Jersey instead of university with her friends. “She told me it was her one act of rebellion,” her daughter said. “She always regretted the fact that she did not have a university education.”
She worked as a student nurse during World War II and married immediately after graduation, at age 22, to Edward Braun, a doctor.
Although she never worked as a nurse, “I do recall being the beneficiary of her training,” her daughter said. “I recall that she made great hospital corners on the bed and she had little tricks to make my sister and me more comfortable when we were home sick from school.”
The coupled moved to St. Louis, Mo. where daughter Meta was born. But a few years later, Braun died of a heart attack while shovelling snow. Herman was a widow in her 20s with a young child.
She moved back with her parents in Toronto. A few years later, she met Louis Herman on a blind date. The couple spent 20 happy years together, and had a daughter, Thea. But he too died of a heart attack when Miriam was 47. That same year, Meta was diagnosed with MS and her mother began devoting two days a week to her, an arrangement that would last for the next 40 years.
“To add to my mother’s difficulties, she had a 17-year-old in full-fledged rebellion mode on her hands,” said her daughter Thea. “I was angry over the death of my father and took it out on her.”
Fortunately, Herman had an outlet: She became president of Holy Blossom Temple’s sisterhood, a two-year post in which she learned a lot about community machinations.
But at age 50, she went job hunting and landed at The CJN in 1971, the year new owners took over the paper, and she began compiling What’s New.
“Many people said it was the first thing they read when they opened up the paper,” related her daughter. “It was the perfect job for someone with all her contacts in the community, her impeccable social skills, tact and diplomacy.”
A few years later, she married Leon Bookman and they shared 20 years before he died in 1998.
While most people would have stopped by this time, Herman went on to marry Cyril Rotenberg three years later. She was 79, he was 81 and they had known each other since they were young children. The couple travelled to Russia and England. When Rotenberg fell ill and died, Herman was widowed a fourth time.
But by then, Alzheimer’s had her in its grip and the disease spared her the grief she would have otherwise suffered. The same was true when Meta died several years after that.
“My mother had a lot of curve balls thrown her way,” her daughter understated, “but she met each one of them with strength, courage and a smile on her face. She always moved forward, not backward.”
Herman is survived by her sister, Ruth Fremes, daughter Thea, four grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.