A Family's Sacrifice

The Dr. Gerald Orken Family

Jewish Cemetery, aka Rosena Chapel or B'Nai Israel; Monroe, Louisiana

There is probably nothing more unsettling in a cemetery than discovering a family plot with several graves marked with identical or near identical death dates.  The questions come: fire? Car accident?  Murder (heaven forbid)? Jewish Cemetery is located in downtown Monroe, Louisiana.  We visited it in my last blog.  The plots are orderly and neat and is probably one of the best maintained cemeteries I've ever been in.  No fire ants!  I talked to the groundskeeper not too long ago about that and praised his attention.  That's the day as I was photographing headstones when I took the above photo.  It's a chest grabber...two adult graves with two little graves beside them.  Death dates are one day apart. Dec. 17 and 18, 1953.  Here's the story I found on the internet and help from a friend after running scenarios through my head. It is one of unusual and unfathomable sacrifice in service to one's country.

Dr. Maj. Gerald M. Orken was Major Gerald Arnold Orken, M. D., he and his family were asleep on December 17, 1953 in the officer's housing section of Andersen Air Force Base on the Marina Islands in Guam when a disabled Boeing B-29 crashed into their home and several others. Major Orken and daughter Vivian lived until the next day, but wife Shirley and son Stephen were instantly killed. The crash occurred at 6:45 in the morning during a storm, the B-29 was on a search for a missing weatherplane, the VJ-1/VW3. It had gone out on Dec. 16th on a low level typhoon penetration to get readings on the storm, Typhoon Doris. The weather plane was never found, however, the B-29 search plane made an emergency landing. The plane missed the runway and crashed into the housing area killing three crewmen, six military passengers on the plane and two officers, two wives and six children on the ground. [Thanks to Lee C. for this information].

Shirley Kaplan was a darling of Monroe society, 25 years old at the time of her death, she was the daughter of Monroe utilities commissioner David Kaplan, a Russian native, whose family settled in north Louisiana.

Shirley Kaplan Orken

Dr. Gerald Arnold Orken

Dr. Maj. Gerald Arnold Orken was an only child of Mr. and Mrs. H. L. Orken of Chattanooga, Tennessee.  He was a graduate of Vanderbilt University Medical School and married Shirley Kaplan in July of 1947.  Vivian was born first and was five years old, Stephen was three at the time of their deaths. They are buried in the Kaplan lot at Jewish Cemetery.

On Memorial Day we celebrate the soldiers who gave their lives for our country and acknowledge the sacrifice they made and try to reconcile their absence from our world as poignant and important.  And it is. I believe the Orken family were fallen soldiers too: Dr. Orken was a promising surgeon, Shirley was no doubt a wonderful mother and the hope and dreams of Vivian and Stephen laid to rest by surviving grandparents who buried their own futures beneath the river rich soil of Ouachita Parish.

Ignorance of No Experience

The Death of 

Young Dorothy Levi

Jewish Cemetery, aka Rosena Chapel or B'Nai Israel; Monroe, Louisiana

This headstone is one I can only imagine was once a pristine white monument to the memory of a much loved little girl, Dorothy Levi, the daughter of Monroe stationary shop owner, Ferd Levi.  Her obituary ran in the Monroe New-Star the day after she died (April 12, 1911).  Cause of death was blamed on pneumonia as a result of measles.  Measles.  A disease that has just about been eradicated until, well, celebrities started complaining and blaming about how vaccinations "caused" autism and other disturbances.  I don't know about you, but I do not get valuable guidance on health matters from Playboy centerfolds or B-list actors and actresses.  Trusting my doctor, who has children of his own, I believe in the power of inoculation.  Just last year, an outbreak of measles wrecked havoc at Disneyland, of all places.  My youngest did her sophomore English research paper on the pros of vaccinating all children as a requirement.  She used this as an example of just how insidious measles can be.  Apparently patient zero in this disaster was an out-of-country non-inoculated  person who came in contact with children whose parents had either chosen not to vaccinate and those too young to have received the full dosage of the MMR series. Fortunately, no one lost their lives.  But this brings the subject up of those who have no understanding of science and viruses.  Someone can sneeze out measles molecules in an area and it will "hang" there for hours...no direct contact needed.  Research done says the aversion to vaccines has to do with the ages of parents now...they have no experience or recall of just how horrible childhood diseases can be so therefore, to opt out is done so with ignorance of consequences.  There are other graves of children who died of diseases we can now prevent here at Jewish Cemetery, across the street at Old City Cemetery, down the street at Magnolia and St. Matthew's cemeteries and if I know anything, it's what their parents would have given to have had access to a serum that could have saved their beloveds' lives.  No doubt, Mr. and Mrs. Ferd Levi would agree.