"Early Life and Times of Lynn Cohen" Time Away From Home, Lynn Cohen

[Taken directly from my photo album of pictures taken in 1961-2. First the front of the ship we took from NY to Gibraltar.]

 I left California with a girlfriend from high school by car with two guys she knew at the University of Berkeley. The four of us drove a car across country to deliver to a teacher of hers in Washington, DC. We had fun in New York before Cathy and I boarded a ship, The Leonardo Di Vinci, for a two week voyage to Spain. Her sister was living at the time in a beautiful Villa on the Mediterranean Sea.  I stayed there ten days. (In the second photo I am wearing a huge orange sweater I bought in Mexico).

Cathy and I were supposed to travel on to Greece and Europe together. But she was not ready to leave.  So I decided to travel to Israel by myself. (Train to Marseille, France, boat to Israel). We were to meet up later in Greece. But she met a guy in Spain (an American folk singer) and I met a guy in Israel. (a farmer on a Kibbutz) and we both got married. It's what young women our age were supposed to do I guess, but I think we were supposed to go to college to find the guys, not in countries far from home. But she and I were a little eccentric for our times.

[Note Wedding Photo: that my face cannot be seen behind the wedding veil the fabric was so thick. The veil and dress were made for me on the Kibbutz]

The wedding was held outdoors in the Orthodox rabbi's back yard. There were kids playing soccer in the background. An Israeli flag on four poles was our Chuppa overhead. The ceremony was in Hebrew and I did not understand a word of it. That's why perhaps ten years later I figured it was okay to end it. But it had some good outcomes. A son born in Israel in 1964 and a daughter born in USA in 1968. And now that first husband who lives in the USA with his second American wife and I share five grandchildren. All's well that ends well.