He said: "I had a cousin named Charles but called Chuck. It wasn't a very Jewish name, but then it wasn't a time to have a Jewish name. Anyway, he drowned at the New Jersey shore in 1956 at the age of 6. His mother told him to go and wash his hands before getting an ice cream and a freak wave came and took him away. When my mother got the news, she screamed and then fainted. I was 7 when this happened. We were living in Germany after the war. Chuck was always, from then on, the missing person at family reunions. He was there, but he was not. The grown ups talked about him in whispers. He was the only family member to drown and, of course, he was so young and being "taken" at such a young age was awful, really awful. Anyway, the years went on and Chuck continues to be the drowned cousin. I only have very dim pictures of him in my head because I didn't know him very well. The thing that really got me, though, was the fact that he never got older. He was always a child. I'm now over 60 years old, but Chuck, or Charles, is still only 6 and he is still just trying to wash the sand off of his hands at the beach."

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