In 2023 and 2024, my partner Naomi and I spent hours searching for the grave of her grandmother, German-born Valesca Schulman Leiseroff. She died in 1972 and in 1974 her son Eric had her name added to a gravestone where she shared space with her brother Herman, who died in 1949. The memorial was in the Westchester Jewish Cemetery on Memory Lane in Greenwich, Connecticut. Despite maps, row locations, the names of adjacent plots and lots of determination, we could not find her memorial. This April, we relocated from Katonah, NY to a Boston suburb, making weekend searches impossible.

But thanks to an unforeseen series of events, we had one more chance to find Valesca, who had left Dresden, Germany with Eric in June 1941, passing by train through Germany, France and Spain to Lisbon, where they boarded the S.S. Excalibur for a voyage to the United States, soon settling in Port Chester, NY.

We were staying with relatives in Stamford for a wedding reception. Over the weekend we had lunch with Naomi’s in-laws, the parents of her late husband, at The Beehive restaurant in Armonk, NY. On the way over, we drove on Riversville Road in Greenwich. That sounded familiar.........

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