I was born in 1953, the son of Beatrice and Marshall Brenner. I have a sister Barbara and a brother Larry, both older than me.

At birth, I had already lost a grandfather on my mother’s side. He was killed during an attempted robbery of his poultry shop. But his wife, my Grandma Yetta, was with us until just a few years ago. She was a strong willed woman with a fiery temper and immeasurable love for her children and grandchildren.

On my dad’s side I had a Grandpa Sam and Grandma Jenny. Sam was already older when I was born. He always talked about wanting to see me Bar Mitzvah’d, but he passed well into his 90’s shortly before the happy day. I always enjoyed listening to him talk.
 

Jenny was a quiet frail woman. Full of love, she rejoiced in having us visit. Through all my youth, I have few memories of seeing either Jenny or Sam walk, they were both frail. But my memory is filled with happy memories of visits to their home.

My father was a remarkable man. Through the forces of luck, he found himself supporting the family at fifteen, pulling them through the dark days of the depression. He went onto help his parents all through their days.
 

He worked in a tank plant during World War II, eventually taking a job as a draftsman with a fairly large manufacturing company after the war was over. He somehow managed to put himself through college and ascended the ranks from draftsman to company president in about a dozen years.

I always thought of my dad as the glue in the family. He could be trusted for anything and his wisdom was often unmatched. I looked to him for knowledge and understanding. He was a great boater and a man with an incredible mechanical knack. I picked up so many traits from him.
 

My mother and I didn’t get along well for many years. She was strong willed and that was difficult. But then again, so was I. Having been born with clubbed feet, I spent my toddler years in casts and then transitioned into braces through most of my childhood. I was a problem child as a result.

There was nothing mom wouldn’t do for me. As I grew, our relationship deteriorated, but her love for me never diminished.

When something was wrong, there was nothing she wouldn’t do. It is interesting, although I know we often didn’t get along, I am hard pressed to recall a specific incident or event. My memories are filled with the happy things we did together, but the fights are all just a blur.

I truly believe that as we get older, we realize that as a youth we fixate on the bad and forget the good. At my age I know clearly that we all have faults and that somehow it is only the good that lasts.
 

My sister Barbara is the eldest. She is battling her third bout with cancer, this time a very difficult strain. Although her health has made her life difficult, she has shown incredible courage and resilience. As a child, she was always the happy one. She was ready to smile, ready to teach and ready to help.

My sister is, to a large extent, the reason for this album. She and I haven’t communicated as well as we should. Perhaps just because we have always lived so far apart. But her illness made me realize how important she was and how I neglected to tell her, and for that matter, the rest of the family around me. Credit her with being my inspiration, my motivation and the one who taught me to live life and be happy.
 

My brother Larry is the middle child. Always a thinker, he has become a very successful lawyer. Larry is somewhat the loner when it comes to the immediate family, but he is the one to count on in a pinch. He showed great dedication to my father, staying with him for those last years of his life.

He’s raised two wonderful kids, my niece Lauren and my nephew Jason. Incredible in their own right, I missed their youth because I lived so far away. As I have gotten older, I have been able to rediscover them and been gifted to have them both in my life.

I have another niece, Erin who also lives out here on the left coast, although not close to me. She is much better with words than I, being a magazine editor herself. I see a lot of both my sister and I in her. In the end though, she is her own person and someone to be proud of.
 

I have an assortment of aunts and uncles and a few other cousins. My Uncle Jerry Brenner was the artistic one. His son Marshall did the cover for Family Moments. Jerry is the one that taught me to be creative. He died young of a heart attack. The world lost a good one then.

My father’s only living sibling is his brother Jack. He and I are close and talk often. Jack is a modest man who is the last to tell of his own accomplishments. I was in my forties before I learned that he was a hero in World War Two. Having gone from private to captain by the age of twenty-four, he was on the beach at Anzio, earning a number of medals during his service. He was also a great baseball player who might well have made the pros had his career not been interrupted by the war.
 

My mom has a brother Jerry who is also a successful and remarkable man. I think often of his wife Edith, now gone, who I am sure was my closest relative outside my immediate family. They have two children, Allison and Gavin that followed with success in the footsteps of their parents.

I could go on, but what is important is that I have a great family. And now, with this album they know how I feel.