the wachters

We manage to get together several times a year, though, for Passover Seders and other occasions, usually on the East Side but occasionally in the wild wild West. That's the ganze mishpochah in the picture: up front you're looking at Mark, Howard and Ruth Braun (Sally's parents) and Sally, and behind them are Ziva (Daniel's wife), Daniel, Meagan, and Mark's father Jerry.

Mark's a real-estate attorney and a Beachwood city councilman, Sally's a teacher in the Mayfield schools, Daniel's in medical school (at the U of Michigan — Go Blue!) and Meagan recently graduated from OSU (a is some kind of a nut!) with a degree in public relations.

These are special people, some of the dearest folks I've ever known. Everyone should be blessed with friends like these!

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		The Wachters Mark Wachter and I were fellow DJs on the University of Michigan's radio station, WCBN, back in the early '70s. His girlfriend Sally was nearby, at Eastern Michigan University in Ypsilanti. I had a car and Mark didn't, so sometimes I'd drive him to Ypsi and do homework at the original Domino's while he and Sally snatched a couple of hours together, and on Sunday mornings the three of us would drive out to Dexter Davidson's for lox and bagels. I was at Sally's parents' home in Cleveland Heights, when they got engaged, although I was in Europe in 1972 when they got married, and missed the wedding. Lydia and I visited them in Maryland in the late '70s, when Mark was in law school at American University, and the picture at the left was taken during that trip. In '79, shortly before we moved to Amsterdam, we visited them again, in Cleveland, soon after the birth of their son Daniel. The next time I saw them was in 1986, when Vicki and I brought six-month-old Becca to Cleveland — where Vicki's parents lived — for her first Christmas. By then, there was a fourth Wachter, daughter Meagan, toddling around the house. In the words of the late, great John Lennon, "Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans" — and, two years later, Vicki and Becca were living in Cleveland and I was staying with the Wachters during my every-eight-weeks trips from Germany. And then, in '91, I moved back to the US and settled in Cleveland myself. I'm on the West Side and the Wachters are on the East Side — and, in Cleveland, that actually means something, so we probably see each other less often now than we did while I was still living in Europe and "commuting" back and forth.
	We manage to get together several times a year, though, for Passover Seders and other occasions, usually on the East Side but occasionally in the wild wild West. That's the ganze mishpochah in the picture: up front you're looking at Mark, Howard and Ruth Braun (Sally's parents) and Sally, and behind them are Ziva (Daniel's wife), Daniel, Meagan, and Mark's father Jerry. Mark's a real-estate attorney and a Beachwood city councilman, Sally's a teacher in the Mayfield schools, Daniel's in medical school (at the U of Michigan — Go Blue!) and Meagan recently graduated from OSU (a is some kind of a nut!) with a degree in public relations. These are special people, some of the dearest folks I've ever known. Everyone should be blessed with friends like these! Return to Friends.