Comments And Opinions

On July 20th, 2016, I wrote a column about my Dad and things he accomplished in his 72 years of life. Now I have come upon some interesting thoughts about him and I will relate them now here, almost 52 years since he passed on.

His name was Joseph Bernard Sohmer and he was born in Kiev, Russia and he came to the USA when he was 7. This was 1900.His Mom and Dad and 4 siblings.

His father worked the cotton mill in Savage, Maryland for a few years. I never asked where they lived, probably not far from the mill. The mill area is a historic place now in Savage and people come to visit the area which now has stores and other shops.

He graduated high school and went to become a lawyer, no pre law then, just straight from high school and he was accepted for law school. He graduated from University Of Maryland Law four years later. I have his graduation program, a copy of it and I saw his name. It made me feel close to him, when he was a law graduate.

He was a very smart man and a good man and he had a bass voice when he sang in the choir when I was about 14 at the Beth Tfiloh Congregation in Forest Park area. He was so proud to put on his choir jacket when he practiced there on Tuesday nights. He would drive there in his newly acquired Plymouth car, burgundy color pre owned called now,then used cars. He loved this car, he had none for a long time. He wrote a column called Comments and Opinions by Joseph B. Sohmer for many years. It was complimented upon by his many readers in The Jewish Times.

I tried to research the JT if they had on film, writings from those years of 1948- 1955 and I would be so excited to read them now. After the holiday season, I will speak to someone there and see if they had some in their archives.

My column from 7-20-16 in The Patch who I write for in Fairfax Station received Best Patch Nationwide. Dad would be kvelling over me,knowing I wrote about him in that one. Kvell means to be proud of someone.It was called Old Stories From The Old Days.

I began to write in about 1946, book reviews for teens, though I was not a teen, then only 12. They would type up my handwritten reviews of the new books they had gotten there and print them out and laid them on the counter where you checked out your books. The teens all fought over who would get the copy that I had suggested after the review. In those days when the book came in new, they had only 3 copies of it.

When you take the inventory of your present life, bring forth all the interesting and fine things you accomplished from your teen years, through now and you will be surprised, how much you attained then and now.

I heard on a television show where an obnoxious member of the group said about a nice young lady of 49 now, who is in Donald Trump's team advising him. She the nasty one, said "she talks without putting a period, a comma or a semi-colon in. She just talks on and on." This young woman is a law school graduate of a prestigious law university, George Washington Law, passed the Bar the first time and she is kind and knowledgeable and she took over the hard job of guiding Donald Trump to realization of him becoming our next president.

Her name is Kellyanne Conway, a wife, a mother of 4, and very talented, pretty and she reminds me of Dr. Ben Carson when he was on a show called Outnumbered today. The nice ladies on that show, talk nicely and respectful to their guests. Dr. Carson is a soft spoken, intellectual, who operated on children with brain problems and he saved thousands of lives at Johns Hopkins Hospital, where he was for about 30 years before retiring. I met him in person 6 years ago, and it was a joy to be in his presence. Kellyanne was on The View with most of these so called journalists or whatever they have named themselves and all they did was to bully her with their thoughts and ideas. She kept her cool and Bravo to her. She is a fine manager for him and she will transfer her kind manner to him and he will benefit from her coolness and her articulate thoughts and reasoning. In law school, she found my son to be very talented and comical and articulate too. She made him join the cast of people performing for a show the school was having, he did not want to do it. She made him do it and he was a big hit and he was happy he performed for the school law school. His name is Jeffrey Alan Clayman and he said she was a fine person, while they were in the school.

A saying I heard from a drama teacher I took his class on at college when I was 34 and getting my degree. He said to all of us, I was the 'oldest' there among 18 year old teens. "A critic is one who does nothing more than find fault with others he is criticizing and he, himself would like to be as fine, as these people who accomplish and try real hard to be successful ."

So to JBS, my late dad, to Kellyanne, to all who want to do well in whatever they try, including me, my son and many who I know, never let anyone bully you verbally, you are number one and they are quite behind you, you are on top of greatness. Elita Sohmer Clayman Fairfax Station