How I Met My Wife*

*True story of Al Zimbler’s life written August 12, 2008; original title “How I Met Your Mother”

It’s been 65 years and 5 days since I met my wife. It started when on August 6, 1943 I was at my friend Billy Rubenstein’s father’s candy store on the West Side of Chicago. It was the Lawndale District, and the store was near Homan on Roosevelt Road. He was working at the store while his father was recovering from something at Mount Sinai Hospital, also on the West Side of Chicago.

He was closing the store and inquired if I wanted to accompany him to visit his father. I first said no, and then he told me he had become friendly with the nurses there and would introduce me to some of them if I would go with him. Then I answered yes.

We drove there in his auto. That’s when I met Esther Zeesman and Mary Ellen Nicholson. Esther was Jewish, and Mary (her nickname was Puss) was not. They were both in training at Mount Sinai Hospital, taking a three-year course to become registered nurses. Billy and I took these two young ladies out for a drive that evening.

How old were these two? They were the same age as Billy and I were. That is 18 years old. They had both recently graduated from high school, Esther from Minneapolis and Puss from some town in Wisconsin. Remember, these were the days when women became either teachers or nurses, and if they did not have much money for a college education, it was nursing that they ventured into.

I was being sworn into the military service on the 8th of August and therefore had just one day to meet the other nurses that Billy had told me about. So the next day I went back to Mount Sinai Hospital, not to visit Billy’s father, but to see what other girls there might be. There was only one that afternoon that was not working.

Her name was Ruth Fishman. She was a recent high school graduate from a small town in Southern Indiana, called Princeton. Billy had come to visit his father at the same time, so he and I took Ruth Fishman out for a ride in his automobile. I left the next day and said I would write a letter to the three nurses in training when I got stationed somewhere and hoped that they would send me letters back.

I did send letters to the three but only one, Ruth Fishman, wrote back an answer to my letters. This started a regular correspondence with her for over a year. When I got my furlough the next summer, I immediately called on her to ask her out on a real date.

There was a problem. It seems that all the nurses in training had a rule that said there could be no infringement on someone dating a guy if another of the girls had previously gone out with that guy. Now I know that an auto ride is not a date nor considered going out with a guy, so Ruth asked Esther and Puss if it was okay to go out with me on a real date. They both said yes for by that time they were each dating the person they eventually married.

I took her out for the following three or four nights and then had her come over to my parents’ apartment at 1242 South Karlov in Chicago, in the Lawndale District. They had moved out of the back of the store while I was in the service, and my father had opened a tailor shop at 3255 North Clark Street in Chicago.

I cannot remember my father or mother’s remarks to me after I walked Ruth back to the student housing at the hospital, but I do remember that when I left to go back after my furlough I told my mother that she was to take care of Ruth and invite her for dinner and maybe some Zimbler family affairs.

I got engaged on Thanksgiving in 1945, got out of service on February 15, 1946, and was married to Ruth Fishman on April 6, 1946.