Living with an Uncommon Last Name

Not surprisingly, Forseter is not among the most common family names in America. For s list of those names compiled by the U.S. Census Bureau, click here: https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2026/2020-census-names-data.html

Forseter is an Americanized, some might say Anglicized, version of my father’s Old World surname, Fuersetzer (Fürsetzer). The transition was not straight line. 

When my parents married, Sylvia Gerson wed Kopel Fuersetzer September 6, 1942. He carried that name into the U.S. Army on December 1, 1942. His specialty was as a machine gunner but never served in combat. He received a medical honorable discharge August 4, 1943. 

Back in my mother’s arms, Kopel was induced to Americanize the family name. Frost was chosen. Two entities ensued. He started a company, Frostex (Frost Textiles), and produced their first heir, my brother Bernie whose February 24, 1945, birth certificate registered him as Bernard Frost. 

Kopel was not too happy with the Frost name as it disassociated him from his heritage, especially after it became known that all of his family back in Ottynia, Poland, had been killed in the Holocaust (he did not yet know one of his brothers, Willy, was the sole survivor). 

So he returned to his original family name with a slight twist. It became Forsetzer. It was Forsetzer when my sister Lee showed up January 25, 1947. Again, Sylvia’s input had him drop the “z.” I was born a Forseter March 6, 1949.

When Uncle Willy arrived several years after the war, he adopted the Forseter name as well. 

Growing up, my siblings and I would say that the only Forseters in America were the five members of our immediate family and the three of Uncle Willy’s. 

In the early 1980s Mike Bailenson joined Chain Store Age’s New York office from Chicago. He told me he went to school in St. Louis with an Elliot Forseter. Can’t be, I responded. People often mistake our surname for Forester, like the Subaru car, or Old Forester bourbon, I suggested. No doubt Elliot spelled his surname differently, I said. 

Naturally, an argument ensued. We wagered 10 bucks on who was right. To settle the matter, I trekked down to our fifth floor office to look in a St. Louis phonebook used by our directory division. Sure enough, Elliot Forseter was listed there in black and white. After forking over the $10, I called my father to ask who was this guy, Elliot Forseter. “Oh, that’s Allen’s son,” he said. “Allen!?!,” I screamed into the phone. “Who are these people? Where did they come from? Why hadn’t we heard about them before?”

My father didn’t really have a good explanation as to why he didn’t stay in touch with his St. Louis relatives, or for those in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area that used a Fursetzer spelling, or a Forseter cousin who had lived in Queens but died in the mid 1950s. Since I traveled the nation quite a bit back then, I was determined to meet Elliot next time I was in St. Louis. Only trouble was, I rarely visited St. Louis. 

Several years later, in 1986, en route to Las Vegas, I had a one hour layover in St. Louis, too short a time to leave the airport but time enough to contact Elliot by phone. He wasn’t home. As I explained who I was to his wife, I could visualize her looking into the phone and saying, “Yeah, right.” I told her I’d follow up with a letter. On the plane ride to Las Vegas I long-handed a legal-sized, seven-page letter detailing our family history. Elliot checked with his uncle, Isadore Forsetzer, in Florida before replying. Elliot, too, had no idea he had any Forseter relatives, as his parents had divorced 26 years earlier when he was 13 and his father moved to Los Angeles (by weird coincidence, to a home around the corner from my sister, which she never knew). He enclosed a picture of himself and his family. He could have passed as one of my father’s sons. 

A few years later I actually visited Elliot and his family, as well as my cousins in Minnesota. We all said we would stay in touch. That was decades ago. I have not stayed in touch. Sadly, I inherited my father’s anti-social gene when it comes to distant family relations. Maybe it was a universal Fürsetzer gene. My cousins haven’t stayed in touch, either. 

Remembering My Uncle on Yom Hashoah

Today, April 14, is Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, for the six million Jews killed during World War II simply because they were Jewish. To my knowledge, all but one of my father’s and mother’s immediate families in Poland at the start of World War II were slaughtered by Nazis and their Ukrainian henchmen. The only survivor was my father’s brother, Willy, 24-years-old at the start of the war.

Uncle Willy’s wartime experience had all the suspense and plot twists of a Hollywood movie. Unlike my father who moved from Ottynia, a shtetl in Galicia, the southeastern part of Poland, to Danzig, and from there to New York, in January 1939, Willy returned from Danzig to their small town where he married and had a son. At the outbreak of the war, the Soviet Union took control of the area under the Polish Partition agreement secretly negotiated with Nazi Germany. Today, Ottynia is part of Ukraine.

In June 1941 Germany invaded Russian territory, quickly occupying the Galicia region. Mass executions of Jews began. Willy survived the first mass killings as he happened to be away from the village that day. He would sneak back into town to see his mother until it was no longer possible to do so before she too was murdered with the rest of the known Jewish residents in October. 

For the next two years he hid out in barns and fields as German soldiers and their Ukrainian sympathizers searched for the few who had managed to escape. His existence depended on an ability to stay one step ahead of the Nazis and to find Polish peasants willing to risk their lives to shield Jews. 

His existence resembled scenes from a war movie. Moving from one hiding place to another. Staying stone silent inside a hidden chamber of a potato bin as a soldier banged his rifle butt on the side listening for a hollow sound. Jumping into an open cesspool when German troops came to the barn he was hiding in. Finally, joining up with partisans to fight, eventually being liberated by the advancing Russian army which conscripted him and sent him to Siberia for basic training where he ate grass to survive for lack of food. 

When it was time to go to the front Willy was saved by a peculiar Russian military custom. When his unit was ready to be sent to the Western Front to fight the Germans, they mustered at the base. The commandant asked if any soldier had reason not to be sent to the battle lines. Willy and several other Jewish soldiers stepped forward. They told the officer they did not fear the Germans. What they feared was getting shot in the back by their fellow soldiers, many of whom were anti-Semitic Ukraines. The commandant kept them in Siberia. Willy always suspected he was sympathetic because secretly he might have been Jewish.

Could be. According to Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center in Jerusalem, “About 500,000 Jewish soldiers fought in the Red Army during World War II. Some 120,000 were killed in combat and in the line of duty; the Germans murdered 80,000 as prisoners of war. More than 160,000, at all levels of command, earned citations, with over 150 designated “Heroes of the Soviet Union”— the highest honor awarded to soldiers in the Red Army” (https://www.yadvashem.org/holocaust/about/combat-resistance/jewish-soldiers.html).

After the war ended, Willy reconnected with my father. He was able to emigrate to Cuba. On a visit to New York he met and married Ethel. They had one child, Max. Willy opened a dry goods store on First Avenue between 10th and 11th Streets in Manhattan. Most of his customers were immigrants, many from Eastern and Central Europe. English was barely spoken in the store, but Uncle Willy was always able to communicate with them, in their languages. 

Some Open-Minded Observations

 To an open-minded observer, the Artemis II spacecraft crew is a portrait of diversity and accomplishment. A Black man (Victor Glover). A woman (Christina Koch). A Caucasian American (Reid Wiseman). A Caucasian foreigner (Jeremy Hansen, a Canadian). 

How proud we should all feel about their combined achievements, present and past. 

But I wonder what Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth must truly feel about the composition of the crew? Trump and Hegseth have made it their mission to retire military leaders who are Black or female. Sometimes those dismissed have been both Black and female. Sometimes gay. Do they see any heroism in the crewman from up north, from a country Trump has disparaged? 

I’m not particularly excited about lunar travel, or the far-out idea of space colonies. I was 20 years old when Neil Armstrong took those first memorable steps on the moon at 10:56 pm Eastern Daylight Time, July 20, 1969. I was a division head in summer camp, Kfar Masada in Rensselaerville, NY, near Albany. 

Normally, the rest of the counselor staff and I would have been preparing to go to sleep in our bunks, but this night we all gathered around a TV screen in one of the common rooms to watch history in the making. We were all so proud, so filled with America-can-do-spirit. So relieved, a few days later, when Armstrong, Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin and Michael Collins made it back to Earth safely.

The euphoria of the first in history event soon dissipated. The Vietnam War was still snuffing out lives, American and Vietnamese, as well as assorted soldiers from our allies. How different from today’s war with Iran that is fought without Allied support. 

Vietnam and Iran have at least one thing in common—both American commanders in chief have been reviled for their actions during their respective wars. 

Under a suspicious pretext, Lyndon Baines Johnson pushed through Congress the Gulf of Tonkin resolution extending to the president (LBJ, then Richard Nixon) unfettered war powers. Trump never bothered to bamboozle Congress. He simply ordered an attack and a compliant military bombed away with just a smattering of congressional dissent. 

But like in Vietnam, Iran has shown that air power cannot subdue a tenacious foe. In South Vietnam more than half a million U.S. ground soldiers could not defeat the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese. Bombing North Vietnam and its supply routes through Laos and Cambodia didn’t thwart Hanoi’s determination. Massive bombing has not cowered Iran. 

Johnson was a Navy veteran of World War II, albeit with limited exposure to combat. Nixon, as well, served in the Navy in World War II, again not on front line duties. Though he was of prime age to be drafted during the Vietnam War, Donald Trump evaded conscription several times, the last time from a medical deferment for what his doctor advised were bone spurs in his heels. 

Vance At a Crossroads: Go back 58 years to observe how a vice president opposed to a never ending war could not unsaddle himself from his commander in chief and thus became a political casualty of an unpopular war. 

Selected by President Johnson as his 1964 running mate, Hubert H. Humphrey kept his misgivings mostly to himself about the escalation of America’s involvement in Vietnam. By the end of 1964 U.S. troops in Vietnam numbered 23,300. The number kept growing—184,300 (1965); 385,300 (1966); 485,600 (1967); 536,100 (1968). 

As troop counts escalated so did opposition to the war, on the streets, college campuses, the halls of Congress and presidential primary states. After Johnson dropped out of the race in March, Humphrey became the front-runner of establishment Democrats. 

But his candidacy did not galvanize anti-war voters, forcing Humphrey to issue a September call for a halt to bombing North Vietnam. He called it a “risk for peace.” Johnson, according to reports, considered Humphrey’s position “treasonous.” 

Humphrey narrowly lost the election to Richard Nixon who, though promising he had a secret plan to end the war, kept it going for another four years. 

Our current vice president, JD Vance, reportedly opposed Trump’s plan to attack Iran. He has been a long-time voice of restraint on foreign involvements. But like most vice presidents, his private counsel is not part of his public comments. 

Trump cannot legally run again for president in 2028. Vance is thought to have the inside track for the nomination. A more military-minded Marco Rubio, secretary of state, is thought to be his primary challenger. 

How Vance publicly handles the continuing conflict, now that he has been unable to secure a negotiated truce with Iran during talks in Pakistan over the weekend, may well determine his future.

Here’s an interesting coincidence: JD Vance shares the same last name of another former American statesman, Cyrus Vance, secretary of state during the Carter administration. They are not related.

During the Iran Hostage Crisis in 1980, Cyrus Vance opposed a military rescue mission to free the 52 hostages approved by President Jimmy Carter. After the attempt failed, Vance resigned in protest. 

No rational person expects JD Vance to resign. 

(Editor’s note: I believe the war with Iran was necessary. I believe, however, the war has been ill-planned, with unrealistic objectives, and has resulted in enormous cost to America’s standing in the world, economies throughout the world, the integrity of our armed services, and our supply of armaments. This war really should have had one and only one objective to be realized at all costs—the successful removal of enriched uranium from Iran.)

Six Feet Under--Unhappy Thoughts

When your grandkids live three hours away by car or plane, family get-togethers are opportune times to measure their growth, particularly if you’re lucky enough to still reside in the home where your children grew up and you haven’t painted over the lines on the closet frame where you marked their ascendancy. 

Finley has far surpassed Dan’s height at their equivalent age. At 11 (Tuesday is her 11th birthday), Cecilia Jane is taller than Ellie was at 15. 

I take a grandfather’s pride at Finley’s stature. Eighteen months ago I relinquished my title as tallest in the family to my then 15-year-old grandson (https://nosocksneededanymore.blogspot.com/2024/10/d-e-t-h-r-o-n-e-d.html).

He has not stopped growing. Over the Passover holiday visit I kept marveling at what I perceived to be his 6’ 3” frame, only to be corrected that he was just 6’ 1-1/2”. Impossible, I persisted. You’re more than three inches taller than me, and I’m six feet! 

Back to back standoff comparisons would not settle the matter. I took out the measuring tape, lined Finley up against a wall, put a pencil mark against the crown of his head and measured out … 73-1/2”! I did the same for myself–71-1/2”. 

Sacré bleu!!! He wasn’t six foot-three. More to the point, I was not six feet!!!

I’ve been very protective of my six-foot status. But the evidence of my shrinking stature has become more and more irrefutable. My physician’s assistant who measures my height has been kind enough to humor me when I insist I am still six feet tall. I’ll be seeing her again next week. I don’t think I will be able to keep up the ruse.

I should have realized I was shrinking when I recently put on a pair of suit pants that had previously fit perfectly but now appeared to be too long.

I am depressed. But I’m not alone at being forced to confront reality. Major League Baseball players are facing the same truths about their heights. Because of the Automated Ball-Strike system implemented throughout the new 2026 season, “Of the 430 hitters on Opening Day rosters, 225 lost at least one inch off their previously listed heights in 2024 and 2025, according to data compiled by The Athletic,” the subscription sports department of The New York Times (https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/7155626/2026/03/30/mlb-short-kings-height-measurements-changing-abs/?source=athletic_user_shared_article_copylink&smid=url-share-ta). 

Baseball players are lucky salaries are not based on size. Then again, a grandfather’s worth is similarly not set by how tall he is.

Israel's Dilemma: What To Do If Trump Bails?

What do you do if your partner in a war to rid Iran of nuclear bomb-making capabilities says, “I’ve had enough. I’m going home.”? 

No “Mission Accomplished” banner for Donald Trump, at least in the world’s eyes, though you can be sure that Trump will compare his military exploits to D-Day, and victories at Gettysburg, Saratoga and Trenton. 

A more apt analogy might be to Napoleon’s and then Nazi Germany’s retreats from Russia. 

But what of his primary partner, Israel, and the Gulf States that have endured rocket attacks to their civil and commercial enterprises, and will now fear continued barrages by Iran and the choking off of trade through the Strait of Hormuz? 

Trump’s “victory” march home would be a hollow one, exposing his frail, bruised ego. Like a bully who underestimates a victim who fights back, Trump retreats when confronted by stronger than expected opposition. In the war with Iran he has no legislative or judicial majority to back him up. 

What he has are allies who will have learned he is an unreliable partner. Short of defusing Iran’s nuclear program he has reinvigorated it. 

The most powerful man in the world—on paper—has been exposed as a paper tiger, surrounded by either incompetent planners or by wiser officials whose counsel he ignored. 

At the beginning of the campaign against Iran, Trump evoked America’s World War II military goal—unconditional surrender by Nazi Germany and Japan. No longer is that top of Trump’s mind.  

Facing an existential threat, Israel has the most to lose if Trump folds before the enriched uranium is contained, by force or negotiated truce. What will Israel do? 

Can it afford to continue pounding Iran by air? Would it risk sending in an elite ground force to secure the uranium, if that is at all possible? Would Trump bless further attacks or consider them an insult to his dominance? 

Israel’s strategists have had recent successes, long-term in their planning, in Iran and Lebanon. But a Trump “premature” withdrawal would leave Israel vulnerable in achieving its ultimate objective of defanging Iran’s nuclear ambitions. For Trump, this has been a war game. For Israel it is an existential conflict. 

 

Voices From the Front In Israel

The front in the current aerial war between Israel and Iran is everywhere in the combatants’ countries and other Middle Eastern states. 

What follows are parts of emails with friends of 50 and 70 years. Yacov is a retired colonel of the Israel Defense Force. He and his wife live in a suburb of Tel Aviv. David is a physician living with his wife in Ashkelon, near the border with the Gaza Strip. He is a high school classmate of mine who I first met 70 years ago as a bunkmate in Camp Massad Aleph.  

The dialogue began with a similar note sent to both of my friends: “My apologies for not reaching out earlier to inquire of your safety and health and that of your family. We all are wishing the war will end soon but know that a successful conclusion requires a positive outcome concerning the buried enriched uranium canisters. They cannot be allowed to remain in Iranian hands. 

“Whether Trump understands this issue, whether he knew about it before engaging in battle, whether he realizes the consequences of a troops on the ground war and his capacity to tolerate the political fallout of infantry fatalities, is the big unknown. We all wonder what Israel would do if Trump simply declares  ‘we won’ and sends our military home. 

“I’m generally a pacifist but the existential nature of the dilemma facing Israel, and to a lesser degree other Gulf countries and the United States, cannot be minimized.”

 

Here, with their permissions, are their responses:

Yakov: “Thank you  for your concern and for reaching out. It means a great deal to us to know that we are in your thoughts during these incredibly challenging times.

“Life here is currently defined by the reality of threats from both Iran and Hezbollah. It often feels like a form of ‘Russian Roulette.’ We never know where the next missiles will strike, as they fall in different locations every time, and we all find ourselves constantly praying that the next one doesn’t land on us. We live between alarms from the Home Front Command app and the sirens that follow.

“We are fortunate to have a reinforced security room (Mamad) in our apartment. When the sirens wail, we gather there, turn on the TV, and wait for updates on interceptions. We stay inside, surrounded by our emergency supplies—flashlights, batteries, water, and radios—feeling safe within those walls, yet always worrying for those without such protection and for the potential damage to our surroundings.

“The scale of the threat is daunting. These ballistic missiles carry hundreds of kilograms of explosives, capable of causing immense destruction. We are incredibly grateful for our defense systems, which are among the best in the world and intercept over 90% of the threats. However, the new tactics—missiles that split into multiple warheads—create new challenges that are difficult for any system to fully stop.

“From our perspective, this is truly an existential war. The Iranian regime has made its intentions to destroy Israel clear, and their enrichment of uranium to 60% is a direct path toward nuclear weapons. To us, the threat of a nuclear-armed Iran is nothing less than the threat of another Holocaust. It is often baffling to us that more of the world does not see this danger as clearly as we do.

“We are deeply grateful to the United States and specifically to Trump for standing with us. We understand that American politics is complex and that many see things differently, having their own priorities and concerns. We are also clear-eyed about the nature of leadership; we know that political winds can shift and that alliances can be unpredictable. But in this moment, that support is vital.

“It is also painful to see the rising tide of antisemitism across the globe and in the U.S. We worry for our Jewish brothers and sisters abroad who must now secure their institutions and remain hyper-vigilant. It feels as though we are all navigating these dark days together, regardless of where we live. We truly believe that a world where Iran is no longer a nuclear threat would be a better, safer world for everyone.”

David: “Fortunately Ashkelon has been little affected by the ongoing hostilities, a mirror image of when Hamas was active, and Ashkelon, Sderot, the Gaza surrounds were constantly bombarded. Now people come to the Gaza perimeter of all places for some peace and quiet.

“Three of our sons have ready access to a safe room in their homes. The fourth lives on the second floor of an apartment building in Ramat Gan (outside Tel Aviv) and when a siren goes off they have to take their two twin boys and run down the steps to the basement. At the beginning of the war it was too much so they came to stay with us for about a week. Since then they’ve been able to cope though they will be with us for the Seder.

“As for broader geopolitics: no one can say what will happen. There’s a political scientist Robert Pape who I heard interviewed on podcasts who talks about an ‘Escalation Trap’ that will turn into Vietnam in which the U.S. will abandon ship with its tail between its legs. Trump had no ideals or ideology and is probably experienced at dumping bad properties. Netanyahu probably sold him a bill of goods about his wonderful soldiers (Begin’s ‘excellent young men’) who will take care of everything and he won’t have anything to worry about and will get all the credit. If that doesn’t happen not only will Trump cut his losses but may turn on Netanyahu.

“Netanyahu is on a mission to maliciously destroy the edifice that Ben Gurion left (the same can be said of Trump vis-a-vis Roosevelt-Eisenhower), with the difference that Trump had Reagan as an intermediary whereas Netanyahu has straddled the entire period, convincing everybody that he was sane. (Reagan also had Nancy whereas Netanyahu has Sara).”

Most of these dialogues with friends transpired in the middle of the night, New York time. I often find it hard to sleep mulling over events of the day, here and abroad. 

My doctor friend David prescribed the following: “Stay well and don’t think about what may happen because it won’t help.”