Jackie Melchior: Remembering Booie

Jackie with Al's Daughter Marcie in November, 2007

Jackie Melchior, a native Californian, came east in 1935 to visit her cousins Al, Miner and Erma. Though she shortly returned to the San Francisco Bay Area, she became a life-long friend and close confident to both Al and Erma. I remember so many conversations with Erma around Jackie and the family legacy in California, I know how much Jackie meant to her--and in so many talks with Al, he would really brighten up at the mention of Jackie, or when he would pick up the phone and Jackie was on the other line. So I know how much she meant to the both of them!

Jackie shares:
Remembering Booie:

I first met Albert Allen in early fall of 1935. Seventeen years old, I had just graduated from high school and had never been out of California. I was a little hick; he was two years older, one of the highly sophisticated eastern cousins who knew so much of the world. They called him Booie, the name his big sister, one year older than he, used for“Brother” when they were babies. I remember him lying on his bed after school listening to the stock market reports on the radio, I think even back then he was investing his allowance wisely and learning how to handle money.

Two incidents I remember vividly. One was my 18th birthday when I became an adult. Everybody gave me presents, but I only remember one of them. Erma, who had, on the day before, become a real adult of 21, was allowed to drive us to the City for tea on the tavern of the green. The law of Mass. permitted me to drink alcohol, so I was allowed to have my first drink—I chose from the menu an old fashioned which sounded safe, but on an empty stomach made me quite tipsy. Everybody said you’ll be okay when you get something to eat, so we went back to White Plains singing joyously. But I had nothing to eat until Booie brought me his present, half a cherry pie, at about four o’clock. We sat on the floor in my bedroom and ate it.

Couple hours later I went to the very special feast Minnie and Erma had created for me and I had trouble pretending to enjoy it on top of an old fashioned and a quarter of a cherry pie.

The other was after a nice dinner the Allens had prepared for another couple who were going with them to the Met. After they left us kids sat for a while around the table, laughing and talking. I waved my hand at something and knocked over my long stemmed goblet of water. I was mortified, wanted to die or at least hide under the table, when Booie said:
“Look what Jacky did! She did this:” and he knocked his goblet over, making the puddle on the table worse. Turning my gaffe into a huge joke that had everybody laughing.

So I loved Booie, like I guess everybody who knew him did. We will miss him, but his spirit lives on, for me every birthday when I think for a moment about that cherry pie as I blow out an increasing number of candles.


Here's Marcie's favorite picture of Jackie. In this picture, Jacky stands next to an old painting of her grandmother Butler, in front of her beautiful portrait by Erma, and near the wooden penguin door-stop given to her as a(strange?) going-away to college gift from Al's mom, Erma Revoir.