Ann Hoffman married Abraham Kushner as she was pushing 26 years of age in the midst of the Great Depression. She had no education and must have felt she had no future alone when she married a man three years her junior.
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| Photo 34a-24K: Tita in front of the Aquarium in New York City in the spring of 1934. | Photo 34b-44K: Tita (second child from left) at Pleasant Lake in Edwardsburg, Michigan in the summer of 1934. |
Abe Kushner was a con man and apparently had been swindling folks for some time when he met Ann and saw a chance to gain some semblance of legitimacy by getting married. For him marriage was probably a career move.
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| Photo 34c-28K: Ann Kushner with Tita at Pleasant Lake in Edwardsburg, Michigan. | Photo 34d-36K: Ann and Tita get their feet wet at Pleasant Lake in Edwardsburg, Michigan. The woman on the far right is Abraham Kushner's sister, Sylvia Kushner Bonner. |
There are apparently no photographs of Abe extant. It is probable that he never allowed himself to be photographed (excepting police mug shots) and wanted to remain incognito.
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| Photo 34e-28K: Tita with Abraham Kushner's brother Pete; summer 1934 in Edwardsburg, Michigan. | Photo 34f-44K: Tita in her grandma's backyard in South Bend; 26 September 1934. |
From the little Laurette was able to recall in 1996 we know that he was corpulent and from old photos we know that he had siblings but most of the life of Abraham Kushner remains a complete mystery. It seems that Ann knew no more then than we do now when she married him.
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| Photo 34g-44K: Helen Kolhler and Tita in grandma Hoffman's backyard in South Bend; 26 September 1934. | Photo 34h-24K: Helen Kolhler and Tita. |
But it was Tita who suffered most from the bad marriage. She would be more than ten years old before she knew the love, comfort and stability of a loyal, strong and honest father in the person of Joseph Canter.
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| Photo 34j-40K: 26 September 1934 in Rachel's backyard. The back of this photo has the following note: "Hello Daddy Darling here I am happy to pose for you. Laurette your little daughter So. Bend, Ind USA" | Photo 34k-24K: Ann (29 years old) and Tita (2 years 10 months) brave the cold morning frost on15 November 1934 at the Hoffman compound in South Bend. Ann forces a smile for the camera but Tita cannot hide her distress. They have never had a home of their own. |
[My mother] was twenty five when she married, and in those days
that was old. She wanted to be a lawyer, she wanted to be a tennis pro,
all sorts of absurd things for a woman of an immigrant family. She even
wanted to go to high school... So she met this man who was Jewish and eastern
European, coming through town, probably on his way to some nefarious activity...
He was a white collar criminal. He was a psychopath, and my mother wasn't
able to recognize that.
[OH-4]
Can you describe a little more about what you mean by white collar criminal?
What I mean to say, he was a charming liar. It was the middle
of the Depression when they married. He was bright, he loved music, he
spoke languages... He had a lot of charisma. But psychopaths usually are
people who are damaged psychologically around the age of two, according
to Spock anyway, and they really can't be fixed. His family could not figure
this person out. They were all fine, law-abiding, upstanding religious
people. He was running around doing things he wasn't supposed to do, I
mean with regard to other people's money.
[OH-5]
Uploaded 15 July 2005, revised 20 December 2005, 31 July 2006.
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