Eighty years ago, my grandfather had an idea to form a family circle to bind members together as relatives and friends.  It was primarily founded as a social club for descendants of my great-great-grandfather who left Eastern Europe and settled in New York City.  At about the same time, a fund was organized to help family members in need.  While The Circle was established in 1936, it wasn't officially incorporated until 1949.

The stated purpose of The Circle was "To provide for recreational and social activities for its members and to foster friendship and mutual respect; to advance the cultural development and promote the common welfare of its members; to voluntarily assist its members and their families in case of sickness and distress and to provide decent interment in case of death; and to ensure that the corporation at no time shall have more than 1000 members."

A Constitution was unanimously adopted in 1938.  The Preamble reads, "To continue, strengthen and foster the ties that bind us in family companionship and relationship and to promote the welfare and general wellbeing of our membership, we, the members of The Circle, in order to provide a procedure for orderly and democratic government of our organization, do hereby establish this Constitution and By-Laws."

And a democracy it was.  Everybody did their part and paid their dues and reaped the substantial rewards of belonging to this loving and supportive organization. 

By the time I came around in 1953, The Circle was in full swing with meetings, parties and picnics.  Some of my most vivid childhood memories are from those festive gatherings which took place regularly back when mostly everyone lived in the greater New York area.  There were plenty of card parties and theater parties and costume parties, but I also remember the frequent cemetery debates.  

While meetings were normally held in people's homes (ah – those long discussions about burial plots), the parties frequently took place at hotels. The hotel I remember the most is The Warwick in Midtown Manhattan and the fun mostly came from tormenting people in elevators.  That requires some explanation.

One of my father's cousins was married to a man named Joey, who was a real character.  He looked a little like Bill Maher with a comb-over.

One time, Joey showed up at a Circle event with a very lifelike dummy in tow, presumably to entertain us kids.  By this time, we were old enough to get a kick out of Joey's antics rather than be deeply traumatized by them. That's why we thought it was uproariously funny when Joey dismembered the dummy and placed one of its arms in the elevator.  I can still hear the chambermaid screaming when she stumbled onto that. 

Then, there was the time in the early sixties when several of my male cousins cornered an uncle in an elevator and regaled him with "Papa-Oom-Mow-Mow."  The uncle was an opera singer and accustomed to singing arias in distinguished venues.  This little number by the Rivingtons, sung a cappella by teen-aged boys in the confines of an elevator, nearly drove him mad. 

The last Circle reunion I attended was at the Fallsview Hotel in Ellenville, New York, where we met to celebrate The Circle's fiftieth anniversary. My father's cousin wrote a book in honor of the occasion. It is from that book that I got information about the origins of The Circle for this article.

While The Circle was spearheaded by Poles fleeing the persecutions of Europe, by the time the seventies rolled around, it had become more ethnically diverse.  In fact, by 1979, The Circle had an Italian-American president.  But, by the early eighties, most original members had passed away and offspring had largely left the New York area. The Circle newsletter went on for a while, keeping members apprised of the births, deaths, marriages, travels and careers of now far-flung family members, some of whom had returned to Europe (but not Eastern Europe) or moved to places like New Zealand and California.

Today, cousins have the occasional phone conversation or e-mail exchange or the rare visit, but, in today's world, it would seem that family circles are a thing of the past.  How many of us will actually be buried beside our relatives in a big family plot in a massive urban cemetery far away from where life has taken us?

Eighty years ago, when The Circle was formed, this country provided a safe haven for people escaping persecution and seeking a better life for themselves and their loved ones.  My ancestors created an infrastructure to ease their relatives' assimilation into a culture that was rife with possibilities. 

My grandfather would not have been able to recognize today's America – had he been allowed to enter at all.