She called herself “the last of the Mohicans”; with her wry sense of humor, my mother knew she was an icon of a long-gone time, a time when life was harder, both physically and materially, yet infinitesimally less complex than the world we inhabit today.

Chana Golda Lesser was the beloved youngest child born to her illustrious parents, Rabbi Dovid Nosson and Tzvetta Lesser, of Krakow, Poland. While her three older siblings were born in Europe, young Goldy, as she was affectionately called, was the “baby,” born to her aging parents in Brownsville, New York, more commonly known today as East New York.