Friday, December 13, 2024
Aunt Dory was our connection to a shared ancestral home at 28 Cumberland Ave. in Trenton. She and I would reminisce for hours about family events at 28 where as children we chased lightning bugs, listened to the summer drone of cicadas and rocked together in white wooden chairs on a creaky porch listening to family elders while sipping soda and (later in life) the occasional highball.
Dory located and help purchase our first family home in Newtown, PA and shortly thereafter arranged its sale when employment and marriage drew us abroad. It was a quick flip enjoyed by every broker and she did it masterfully.
Even so, our annual visits to Bucks County would always include a home gathering at Pennsbury Court, Yardley where the smell of warm cookies and in autumn the crackle of a living room fire made us feel at home and stirred those good old memories of 28 Cumberland, somehow always the centerpiece of conversation.
For a treat we’d sometimes drive to nearby Carlucci’s Grill on Big Oak Road and during that drive Dory would point out the beautiful homes, newly built or renovated farm houses and the ever rocketing real estate market she knew so well and bought and sold to clients with such passion.
Her love of reading, especially detective novels, made her a familiar face and welcome member of the local town library and later in life with her failing vision her local library rewarded her with a vast repository of audio books to occupy her imagination for hours on end.
With her passing we are left with the fading images of our early childhood at Cumberland Ave and as adults in our prime in Bucks County. All are treasured memories we will carry with us, and in honor of Dory, until we can remember no more.
With love and gratitude,
Norman, Yao Fang, Francesca and Kunlun
