PhiLip David Stern

I love this picture, even though I can't really remember this all all. I'm the little boy in the striped t-shirt on the far right, kind of shyly there behind my father.  We are on the Empress of England traveling from Liverpool to Montreal. My older brother (by one year) is to my right then my Mother,  my big brother the tallest one in the center (he stayed in England) and our Au Pair Girl  (who came to Canada with us).  On the left are my Aunt  and  my cousins (they weren't on our voyage, just for the picture) My sister isn't in the picture.  

Here's the story, we are at Liverpool about to embark at a very posh restaurant (according to my big brother) 

Waiter: 'and you sir what would you like with your chips?' (translated French fries) 

Me: 'Ketchup' 

This hasn't changed. 

But there's a miracle or maybe more of the mystical power of fate that changes our personal histories and futures-how things happen, why they happen. But here's my father a Jewish-German immigrant who landed in England in the early 1930's, and my mother daughter of Estonian immigrants, living in Hull, living through wartime England, but they wouldn't meet until the 1950's.