Something a Little Lighter, Pre-1967

From 1960 to 1967, my aunt Edith Woodrow, z"l, my mother's younger sister, served as executive secretary to the Israeli ambassador to Canada, in Ottawa. After the 1967 war, she moved to Toronto to be closer to her married daughter and went to work for Israel Bonds.

One of Edith's regular duties at the embassy was to call the hosts of any diplomatic dinners to which the ambassador was invited. The point of the call was to remind the hosts that her ambassador couldn't be seated at the same table with the ambassadors from Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, etc.

Once, while Edith was on vacation, the person covering for her forgot this critical task. As a result of the oversight, the ambassador arrived at a dinner to find that he had been seated with one of the Arab diplomats. When the hosts tried to find someone to switch places with him, they discovered other complications: They couldn't move the Greek ambassador to the same table with the Turkish ambassador, nor could they seat the Indian ambassador at the same table with the Pakistani ambassador, nor the Taiwanese with the Chinese, etc., etc. What a nightmare!

While Edith was still at the embassy, my parents and I traveled from Detroit to Montreal to attend a family wedding. We stopped in Ottawa so that Edith could travel to Montreal with us. While we were there, she took us to a production of the Broadway musical "Fiorello", about the former mayor of New York. In one scene, depicting his first campaign for Congress, LaGuardia visits various ethnic neighborhoods and addresses each group in their language, with an appropriate sign. The troupe approached Edith for help with wording a sign to be held up in the Jewish neighborhood. She transliterated LaGuardia and Congress into Hebrew letters but the troupe didn't get it quite right. The Hebrew sign they held up read "Congress for LaGuardia".