During my childhood I remember Debbie mostly playing the piano all the time and talking on the phone with friends. I would hear her doing homework with friends over the phone. In fact, she spent her life over the phone all the time.
When Debbie was about 12, I moved to a college outside of Washington, and my older brother, Brian, was no longer living at home. During this time my parents would return from work at six in the evening and Debbie would return from school to an empty house.
Our mother worked in accounting and our father initially worked in running a hardware store he inherited from his father Aaron Zvi, but as the neighborhood in Washington became poorer because of the nature of the population that came over the years, the store ran into financial difficulties.
There has always been a problem of money at home, but Debbie was not shown these difficulties. She was like the princess in the house. Only when our father left the store and went to work as a purchaser of the Pentagon was there an economic improvement in the home.
I graduated in 1969, when Debbie was 16. From that time I remember her, mostly, talking on the phone with her friends, Laura or Roda or other friends. Talking, laughing, asking questions and playing the piano that was in the living room.
When I got home I learned a lot of arithmetic, I learned all kinds of tricks how to learn algebra. I remember one day I was standing in the kitchen explaining to Debbie what it took me an entire semester to study. I was so proud of myself. Then Debbie said to me, "Yeah, that has to be true." My feeling was: "One moment, I have not yet come to explain to you the punch line and you have already understood the matter."
Debbie was very focused. I remember her always looking for meaning. One hard time, when she started with repentance, she made our father so nervous on Passover eve because of all her desires that everything would be completely kosher.
A photo slideshow of her talking on the phone, can be flipped to the sides