Sylvia D. Silver 4/20/1917-3/12/2007
Family: Husband Louis Silver; Children: Jacqueline and Robert
Bob Silver , her son, reported that Sylvia met her husband Louis one Summer in the Catskills. Louis was visiting from North Carolina for the primary purpose of finding a wife. They dated for year and Louis brought her down South where he owned a grocery store in Graham, North Caroline. Sylvia, a girl from Manhattan, had quite a cultural shock. She later reported that it was the worst year of her life. She never got over her biased judgment about the intelligence and culture of people with strong Southern accents.
However, she adjusted and was an anchor for the family. She was the one who would connect the extended family members together, spreading news reports about relatives to all interested parties. She also would always gather the extended family together for holiday meals. Cooking was an important creative focus for her. Bob Silver remembers how she collaborated with her African American housekeeper in order to create new recipes that blended Eastern European food with Southern cooking.
She was a legal secretary and always loved words. According to Bob Silver she was the “original google researcher”, except that she used the means available at the time—which meant using the town library. She would call the local library virtually daily in order to research some fact or find out more about the meaning of a word.