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Ecw Press - Wise Sharp Rosalie

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215 pages

English

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'The rags to riches tale of a larger-than-life romance of over seven decades Me & Issy is a love story about how a troubled and deprived child chanced to meet a man who worshipped her, brought her a fantasy life of four boys and extraordinary opulence and banished her self-doubt. She in turn was awestruck and mystified by his acumen and daring during his founding of the Four Seasons Hotels. Beginning with her childhood in North Toronto, in a very Jewish home surrounded by non-Jews, Rosalie enchants us with anecdotes about her family, Isadore Sharp s family, and the growth of their own in the light of the expanding Four Seasons chain. How did she go to the Ontario College of Art & Design while simultaneously raising four rambunctious boys? How did Issy open hotel after hotel with only his collateral of confidence and charisma? Rosalie is a rapt follower of his astonishing success and the first fan of his legendary town hall talks to 40,000 emp

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Lettres et linguistique

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Publié par	Ecw Press
Date de parution	06 septembre 2022
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781778520594
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	3 Mo

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Me & Issy
A Four Seasons Romance
Rosalie Wise Sharp

Contents Dedication Introduction Chapter One: Snooping around in the Past Chapter Two: Girl Meets Boy Chapter Three: Paths across the Sky Chapter Four: Growing Up the Hard Way Images I Chapter Five: None of the World’s Goods Chapter Six: The Wind in the Willows Chapter Seven: The Lost Genes Chapter Eight: High School Capers Chapter Nine: Go Together like a Horse and Carriage Chapter Ten: Our Dream House Images II Chapter Eleven: What Flower Is That? Chapter Twelve: Disaster at Its Worst Chapter Thirteen: Not a Decorator Chapter Fourteen: A Train across India Chapter Fifteen: Our Last House Chapter Sixteen: 260 Oil-on-Canvasses Acknowledgements About the Author Copyright

Dedication
For Isadore, our children, and our children’s children

Candles and kepas for Shabbat blessings, 51” x 61”.

Isadore and Rosalie Wise Sharp, September 6, 2021.

Introduction
by Isadore Sharp
Just a few words from me, “the husband of,” on my life with Rosalie, my companion of 69 years. I believe the Covid pandemic has brought many of us to search our early lives for answers about how we got from there to now.
That first night we met, Rosalie told her best friend, Merle, that she had found the man of her dreams, and I do believe that first meeting was providential.
So let me explain. It was 1952 and reluctantly I had to go to my cousin’s wedding and, for those who knew my mother, you know what I mean — I “had to go.”
Well, I noticed this beautiful young bridesmaid and at that time of my life, of course, I would try to make out.
So, I asked her to dance, got her telephone number, and here we are 69 years later.
And had I not attended that wedding we never would have met, because our lives and interests were poles apart.
As I have said many times, I know that my success is directly related to having married Rosalie because she has always been satisfied and happy with whatever we’ve had — even managing to do everything on my salary of $40 a week when we got married.
And over these many years she has always been unconditionally supportive.
Most important, of course, was by filling in for me in raising our four boys.
She was always there for them — like putting her professional career on hold because, as she told me then, “I want to be there when the kids come in and yell ‘Mom, what’s for lunch?’” But also supportive in my work, because she was never, ever negative and was always in my corner.
So, when Rosalie said, “My most valuable contribution to his success has been my silence,” that meant that if things didn’t work out, she was ready to face the problems together. And, yes, she has been my unfailing helpmate for 69 years, who has enriched my life in so many ways.
And I never cease to be in awe of her paintings, her out of-the-ordinary table decorations, and her great sense of personal style. She surprises me daily with her knowledge, whether it’s about antiques, opera, books, art, ceramics, or some esoteric term on TV that I’ve never heard of.
All borne out of a compulsive curiosity. Who else would knock on doors of strange houses and ask for a tour?
She was both school bright and disciplined. On beginning her fourth year of high school, she decided to take two languages that she hadn’t taken before. So, every day during lunch hour Rosalie taught herself three years of Latin, and two years of German; she wrote the final fourth-year exams and passed with honours in both subjects, with no classrooms and no teachers. Her oil-on-canvas works are of every genre from abstract to portrait. And her handwriting is calligraphic. When she was in grade school spelling bees, she was the last man standing.
To list a few of her achievements: in 1969 she graduated with the Lieutenant Governor’s Award as the top student at OCAD, became a successful interior designer, ran her company Rosalie Wise Design for more than 20 years, and has written five books.
And her writing skills were best recognized in 1975 when she received a six-page response to a six-page letter she wrote to the author V.S. Naipaul about his book An Area of Darkness .
He ended by writing: “My dear lady, stop reading, start writing.”
And, as our son Tony once said when he was about 14 years old, and I quote: “Dad, how are you ever going to keep up with Mom?” Well Tony, I’m still trying.
So, this is a great opportunity for me once again, to thank and praise my remarkable Rosalie — who can’t wait to start each day, and always with that brisk resolve in her step.
2020

Self-portrait , 2015, 51” x 61”.

Chapter One Snooping around in the Past
Snooping around in our childhood is our day’s occupation during this year of the pandemic 2020. We are after answers. How did it happen that my husband and I are still best friends and lovers after 69 years? How did our random journeys from childhood fit each other as easily as my Apple earbuds slide seductively into their sleek white case? How did it happen that Isadore has become a global hero both to us and to his 40,000 employees? And why do we fly first class in a private plane and live in a rather nice house? Maybe the answer can be found in patching up the past, probably a regular pastime of all of us old fogeys although we don’t admit to being old, just “older.” Isadore and I come from similar privileged beginnings. Not moneyed but rich as only an immigrant household can be. Our parents took to the new opportunities with daring, a steady focus, and unremitting self-reliance. Toronto was the “ goldene medina ,” Yiddish for golden country, where everything denied to Jews in Poland was possible. Here you could own land, borrow money from the bank, be a landlord, and send your kids to college. The two of us are the last generation where Yiddish was spoken, food was kosher, grandmothers lived upstairs, clothes were scarce, and gentiles were hostile. Me and Issy had these things in common.
We spoke Yiddish to our grandparents, but our kids know hardly a word of a language spoken in all generations before theirs. These days, I usually say at family get-togethers, “Let’s sing just one Yiddish song,” as my mother and I did in the car all the way to Montreal and back on our annual visit to her brother. In 1930s to ’50s Toronto, Issy and I lived a life just a few steps from the Polish shtetl, those thousands of small Jewish towns. Some had escaped from the Spanish Inquisition or were expelled from too many other countries to name.
Our parents practised a life they knew from their parents, and their parents’ parents, defined by the Jewish rites of passage — circumcision, bar mitzvah, wedding under a chuppah (canopy), and by Friday night dinners, the high holidays, and the Old Testament. Theirs was a fierce work ethic. It is told that Max Sharp, Issy’s dad, stayed home for his honeymoon and didn’t head out for work until 9 a.m.
Max was a sweetheart. He moved gently through life with never an unkind word or a prejudice. He wasn’t tall — we were eye to eye — with blondish Ashkenazi complexion and a slim build, with an interest in keeping that way. He was the most agreeable person known to man. He faced every hardship with an unruffled equanimity. A bombshell would hardly disturb his poise. He said yes to everything I ever suggested. Yes to reading Pearl S. Buck, yes to a speech I wrote for him, and yes to compose his own geometric designs in his needlepoints (instead of the stamped store-bought patterns). He produced at least 50 of these, and I have a stool in my dressing room covered in a “Max original” Vasarely-like geometric.
One time, Max and I dropped into a Gucci shop in Palm Springs and I suggested he buy a pair of bright red loafers. Not one to say no, he tried them on and as we were checking out at the cash I said, “Max you know these are quite expensive.”
“How much can they be? Shoes are shoes,” he replied.
However, I noticed his surprise as he paid the amount — $500. When Max died, many of his grandsons competed for those shoes. I think they had to draw straws.
Max came from a long line of rabbis and personified the Mosaic morality of the shtetl. Material things should neither be praised nor disdained. A Jew should never boast, exhibit undue enthusiasm, give the exact number of his grandchildren, or kiss his wife in public; all exhibitions of emotion are bad form. So, Max with his verbal economy never used superlatives. When I asked him if he enjoyed one of my brown rice salads, he answered, “There’s nothing wrong with it,” which I knew to be praise indeed. With his slim build he preferred light fare, but he dutifully ate the resident heavy Jewish cooking. I remember him sitting downcast, staring at the tablecloth, resigned to his fate, fork and knife raised at the ready as Lil dropped yet another plate of schmaltzy food before him. Papa Max was tolerant in the extreme and embraced the modern dysfunctional family as if he was born to it. When his granddaughter Wendy told him she was pregnant — no husband — he gave her a big “mazel tov.” When a friend recommended a diet of no coffee, carbs, sugar, or alcohol, he adopted it for life.
Max was born in 1902 in the shtetl of Oshpitzim, famously Auschwitz in German. Yes, Auschwitz was a Jewish town. Our own family of 11 visited that town and the Auschwitz cemetery in 2011 and signed a visitor’s book in the “Sharf” family mausoleum. We looked at the list of names and found