September 13, 1913–April 4, 2014
Sadie Alexander was born in Newark on September 13, 1913 and died April 4, 2014 in Seattle. She was the youngest of the four children of Fradel and Elazar Levy, trilingual immigrants who spoke Polish, Yiddish, and then English. In 1934 Sadie married Harry Alexander, a shoe worker. In the ’50s they operated a candy store, and Sadie became its accountant, tax manager, and paramedic. A graduate of Erasmus High School at a time when American high school graduates were educated people, she would instruct her three sons (Edward, Arthur, and Morton) in the refinements of English grammar while washing the dishes. She also put her children in touch with a time when American Jews still had a culture and inner world of their own. After her husband’s death she moved to Seattle in 1999, and in 2007 to the Kline Galland Home, where she was frequently visited by her Seattle family: Edward, his wife Leah, grandchildren Rebecca and David, and great-grandson Philip. Rebecca remembers her grandmother in the following prose poem:
Sadie Alexander z”l:
My grandmother,/who had two birthdates/who was wry, kind, critical, clever, and a great teller of stories/who cared for me and my brother when our parents were traveling/who was an expert on swimming but could not swim/who took me all over New York City/who endured a film about Edie Sedgwick because I wanted to see it/who encouraged me to watch Soul Train so I could learn the latest dances/and study up on “what the girls are wearing”/who escorted me on the subway from Forest Hills, Queens to Myrtle Avenue, Brooklyn/when I started graduate school/and always sent me home with food/who was not known for her fine cooking or copperplate script/but who could sew anything, blow the shofar, and recite “Charge of the Light Brigade”/from memory even into her 90s,/will always be with me.
Sadie’s family and friends are invited to remember her on April 27 at 2 p.m. in the Kline Galland Day Center.