Author: Tamara Wien Frankel
Born: 6/4/1922
Died: 12/30/2007
Bio: Tamara Wien was born in Constanza, Rumania to Frieda Auerbach Wien and Herman Wien.  She loved living with her extended family, including Grandmother Rebecca Auerbach, and playing on the beach along the Black Sea where she collected the tinest and most delicate shells of pale pink, pale yellow, and pale orange. At least one time, she played on the beach with the young Prince Michael.  

Her father was involved in the family oil business in Rumania, but had lived in the United States from the time he was thirteen in 1905.  He became an American citizen and fought with honor in the US Army in World War I and was always very proud of his service and his country.  He met Frieda in the United States when she came with her mother, Rebecca, and her three sisters (including Henrietta and Jetta).  They returned to Constanza to marry and lived there until 1930 when they went back to America with young Tammy entering through the Port of Philadelphia.  While Frieda and Herman worked to establish themselves in Brooklyn, Tammy lived in Albany with Oncle Adoph and Tante Sarah Auerbach and their children Ben, Morris, Phillip, Maxie and Ruth.  Tammy and Ruth remained "sisters" throughout their lives, while Maxie and Phil acted as protective "Big Brothers."   

Tammy excelled in school, determined to learn English as quickly as possible.  She became a superb writer and won prizes for her creative writing throughout her education.  Tammy was on the staff of the Literary Magazine and wrote numerous stories published within its pages.  She graduated from Abraham Lincoln High School in Brooklyn, NY and went to Brooklyn College studying Social Anthropology, Psychology, and Sociology as she was interested in becoming a social worker.  She had been and remained a member of the Art Students League where she met Simon Frankel whom she married on 12/23/43.  Tammy painted and sculpted while Si honed his talents at Pratt Institute ultimately focusing on Graphic Art. He established a freelance business in Commercial Art, illustrating myriad books, magazine covers and articles, and so on; he also was Director of Art for a creative children's magazine for a number of years while it remained in existence.    

Like so many others during WW II, Tammy served homeside in the Secretarial Pool for the Department of Defense while continuing to attend Brooklyn College in the evenings.  When Si on principle declared he was a conscientious objector and was imprisoned in Philadelphia, Tammy moved to Green St. in Philadelphia to be near him and she worked for several years at the Philadelphia Child Guidance Center.  The couple returned to Brooklyn and lived with her parents, during which time their first daughter Judith was born.  They designed and built a house in Elmont, N.Y. with the help of family members ( including brother Abraham Frankel and Marvin Frankel and cousin Gerald Juris and good friend Shep).  The house was innovative and environmentally friendly incorporating, among other things, radiant floor heating, an open floor plan, and lots of natural light.  They moved into their new house in 1948 along with a small dog and Nugget the orange cat.  Stephen and Lory were born in 1949 and 1951 during very happy times.  The children tumbled in enormous piles of autumn leaves and played with loads of kittens out on the brick patio beside the French doors.  They picked fresh vegetables from Tammy's enormous garden and closely examined golden spiders in huge webs hanging amongst the corn stalks.  Frieda and Herman spent every weekend with the family. Much delicious food was cooked and eaten, many stories were told and read, and warm fires were stoked and watched. Sadly, Frieda died on 12/23/51, and Tammy missed her mother all her life.   

Lisa was born in 1955 in a new house in East Meadow, N.Y. to which the family had moved on 4/30/54.  Tammy designed and nourished beautiful new gardens all over the landscape, planting mounds of brilliant pink azaleas, gorgeous and perfumed peonies, roses of many colors including her favorite lavendar, a fragrant wall of mock orange, and loads of annuals.  Tammy also planted a willow tree to commemorate her other book, "Weeping Willow."  Long before it became fashionable, Tammy became a Master Gardener on her own, a lifelong talent and avocation for which she was well known.  She cultivated her garden indoors as well, absorbing the elements of design from her good friend Hilda Skolnick and integrating that with her own exquisite taste in color, line, shape and space.  She decorated the house with modern furniture from Knoll and Herman Miller, painted the walls  Chinese Red and Mandarin Orange, and dark-stained the hardwood oak floors.  She was always ahead of her time.

Most important to her were her children.  Tammy wanted a large family and had thought about having six kids, coming as she had from being an only child.  She made a lively, warm, fun home for them filled with love.  Jewish holidays were always celebrated with zest and with Tammy's special traditional foods passed down from her mother and her mother's mother including imcomparable homemade gefilte fish and light-as-a feather matza balls in tasty chicken soup.  There were many outings to the parks, especially to play tennis, ride the carousel, and have picnics.  There were many outings to the city to visit other members of the family (including the Auerbach family, the Juris family, the Wunderlich family, the Frankel family) and friends.  And of course there were outings to museums, especially the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and to the Bronx Zoo (which inspired Judith to paint the flamingos and win one of her Art Contest prizes).  Her father died on the first day of Passover in 1961 after living with the family for a time; he was sorely missed.

Tammy divorced Si in the early 1960's and did her best to support the family working variously at a Social Work agency, a publishing house, and later at Long Island Jewish-Hillside Hospital.  Still later, she was Administrative Assistant for Sherri Hite for two years commuting two hours each way each day for a profoundly demanding job.

Mostly, she wanted to be available to and for her children and she was.  She made sure all four children went to college and was tremendously proud of them and of their accomplishments. She and her children remained extremely close as they grew up and cultivated lives of their own.

When Judith and her then-husband invited her to move to Pennsylvania, Tammy did so in order to be with them and their two children, Jennifer and Rebekah.  She thrilled to be close to her granddaughters and enjoyed every minute with them.  As with her own young children, Tammy read to them in the most expressive of voices  as they listened raptly and giggled and sat as close as they could to Grandma.  She painted with them and drew with crayons and craypa pastels and sculpted with playdough and clay.  And she took them to pick wild raspberries and blackberries and cultivated apples and pumpkins.  They identified flowers and trees together and fed the birds off her deck.  They hugged and kissed a lot.  And they cooked and baked together, chocolate chip cookies, peanut butter cookies, butterscotch brownies, bagelach, spinach gnocci, stuffed cabbage, and jam from the berries they had picked.

While in Pennsylvania, Tammy worked for Ted Vallance at Penn State University.  She proposed a column to the Centre Daily Times which she called "On the Job," and for about a decade, she interviewed and wrote about two people every month regarding their work, how they got into it, how they felt about it, and how it reflected their philosophy of life.  Though she planned the interviews to be one or two hours, she found that people loved to talk to her and to open up about themselves and their lives.  Consequently, almost every interview lasted several hours and often a friendship developed out of this connection between Tammy and her interviewee.  Tammy's interest was in exploring many different paths in work and life and so she sought all sorts of people in all kinds of jobs.  Her columns were rich in meaningful depictions, and she became well known throughout the larger community for her journalism.  People far and wide would seek her out to comment on her columns and to compliment her writing, and they would frequently compliment her to her daughter as well.  Tammy chose to stop writing the "On the Job" column when the newspaper features editor wished to lessen the complexity of the language and go to a "Who, What Job, Where, Philosophy of Life quote" template with a very large photo.  Tammy as always was not interested in dumbing down anything she was involved with.  She was, however, sad to end her association as a journalist with the paper which she had thoroughly enjoyed.  

She had another project in which she interviewed many survivors of trauma, including rape; her plan was to write a book about the enormous strengths and inner resources of these women, but the book was not completed.  She also proposed helping people to write and record their Family Histories, their Memorials.

While in Pennsylvania, Tammy designed and cultivated beautiful gardens for which she also became widely known.  She sought out  unusual perennials, particularly those which are not in-your-face- showy but rather more subtly beautiful and even rare.  She became a regular on the nursery circuit as she explored the possibilities.  Her gardens were lush, gorgeous, and colorful as well as perfumed with luscious scents of old-fashioned varieties of peonies and other flowers.  People came from all over town to see her gardens and to talk with her, something she always loved.  

Tamara Auerbach Wien Frankel was a person almost everyone could talk to.  She met a multitude of people over the years and became friends with many.  Her lifelong friends, Dorothy Greenside, Lillian Burt, and Lillian Sitoma were always in her heart and mind; they remained connected through visits and letters throughout their lives.  Newer friends from Pennsylvania, Monique Yaari, Judith Katz, Evelyn Zialyk,and Lillian Abrams in particular, were treasured by Tammy and remained connected until her death.  She much cherished her only surviving first cousin, Cornelia (Carmela) Auerbach Shpigler (Shpiegler), in Haifa and wished that they were able to talk far more often than they managed to.  Her newest delight before her death was her great grandson, Andrew Aaron Frankel Danauskas, who upon first meeting her wanted to hug and hug and hug her and never let go.  It was mutual.  Her books delight him as they did her own children and grandchildren and countless other kids.