Gertrude "Trudi" (Ingster) Rockett

A Memorial to Gertrude (Trudi) Ingster Rockett

May 24, 1924 – April 2, 2020

By her son, Paul

Gussie Rockett was born on May 24, 1924 in the midst of good economic times.  Within a week her mother, Rose Torchitska Greenfield Ingster, was chided by her sister who said:  “Was für ein name ist Gussie?  This is America.  Call her Gertrude.”  And so it was.  From then on she was known as Gertrude and later as Trudi to her friends.

Her father Harry Ingster was a Jewish emigrant from Warsaw, where his family had lived for ten generations.  Harry came over as a knitter in his mid-teens.  Harry and Rose married in 1918 in Philadelphia, right after WWI.  As the depression deepened he took all the money he had saved and bought a horse and a cart, and sold fresh vegetables.  One day his horse was hit and killed by a car, and Harry took boxes of vegetables and sold them off his back.  He finally got a job in the Post Office and retired from there.

Rose (originally Rachel) Torchitska, also Jewish, had left home with three other sisters and walked from her home in Baranovich, Belorussia to St. Petersburg Russia and on a ship to the US.  She was a seamstress and mother of three children:  Mollie, then Trudi, and lastly Bernie.  All of Rose’s sisters made their livelihoods in the Strawberry Mansion area of Philadelphia, living on or near Arizona St.  Two of Rose’s brothers escaped to South Africa before WWII, where they flourished, and their families finally emigrated to Toronto, Canada.  Trudi met some of these relatives decades ago, with their name shortened to Torch.

Trudi never got accustomed to being the middle child.  Only her older sister went to college, and later her younger brother.  Throughout school Trudi was referred to by teachers as Mollie’s sister.  But there was never money for Trudi.  So my mother went to college at night on her own, while she was working, after graduating from Girls’ High in 1942 in Philadelphia.  She finally finished her college training in the 1960s, getting a Masters of Arts in Education in 1966.  Issac Azimov was the speaker at her graduation.

Trudi taught fourth grade in a New Jersey elementary school, and left with accolades from her students’ parents and later from her students.  She truly loved teaching.  She worked night and day and never failed to spend massive extra time with both troubled students and excelling students in her classes.

She had two sons, Paul in 1947 and Allan in 1952.  She had married Jack Rockett right after WWII in 1945.  Jack was a PhD Chemist, getting his degree at Penn State in 1950, living in poverty on VA benefits.  Jack, Trudi, and I moved to Providence, RI and then to New Haven, Conn, and then to Metuchen, NJ, and finally to Westfield, NJ, chasing better jobs.  We lived in apartments until Westfield in 1960, where we built our first house.

Jack had been raised by a recalcitrant hfather and an adventurous mother and had an older brother and sister.  In his family his siblings Ann and Harry decided that Jack would be the one to get sent to college, rather than no one.  His father had emigrated from Lvov, Poland and had become a union organizer.  That didn’t help a lot during the depression and Jack was placed in foster care and orphanages when money was tight.

Trudi and Jack’s marriage was economically successful, but emotionally destructive.  Today Trudi would have left her husband in her 30s and gone on to be self-supporting.  In the 1950s such behavior was the exception, not the rule.

In 1977 my brother Allan developed a brain tumor at the age of 24.  He underwent Chemo that made him vomit for days afterwards.  Trudi learned that marijuana could quell that nausea.  She began to go into nearby cities, put her life on the line to buy pot on the streets to give to Allan.  It helped him immeasurably.  After two tortuous years, he died.  The experience tore apart whatever solid remained between my parents.  Trudi never went back to teaching.  She became somewhat more independent.  Jack and Trudi traveled a lot after he retired in 1981.  They loved visiting Jack’s cousins living in London and in Brussels.

I had two daughters in 1980 and 1983.  My wife Cathy was Catholic, and we never committed a religion to the girls, an error as I look back.  But every year Trudi would send a big box filled with Hannukah gifts for each of the girls for all eight nights.   It made my life easier, and endeared the girls to her and to the holiday.  We still call one another on the first night of Hannukah, both my girls Sarah and Hannah, and my mother.

My father died in 2001 after a three-year struggle with colon cancer.  Trudi and Jack had moved out to Albuquerque in 1995 to be near me and the girls.  I had become divorced in 1991, and was raising the girls jointly through their high school.  Trudi, now 77, decided to stay in Albuquerque after Jack died.  After a few years she developed one medical problem after another.  Heart problems, circulatory problems, leg wounds, and more.  But during this time my mother made friends with Josie who cleaned her house, with Gin who helped maintain her house, with her gardeners, with Mr. Dong who pressed and cleaned her clothes, and with her neighbor DeAnn and Steve and their daughter, who shared my mother’s birthday.

In 2007 I married Joanne Brown, my present wife and love, and together we would visit my mother in Albuquerque.  We took her to both Sarah’s (2008, 2011) and Hannah’s (2006) college graduations.  We took her to Santa Fe, where she loved the Indian Market in August.

Finally, she no longer could manage on her own, and she moved into a seniors’ residence in late 2014.  She hated losing the roominess of her house, but eventually she recognized the value of the quickly available care offered.  Up until her 93rd birthday, Trudi had better hearing than I did at age 71 and was quick to argue, showing strong democratic values; she was quick to laugh, and was a daily reader of the New York Times.  The period from then to now was a slow steady fall in awareness and handling life’s basic needs.  Yet she was still on our annual phone call last Hannukah, wishing all of us a good life.  I will miss her dearly.