Looking Back….
AT CHARLOTTE NEUBERGER
By Sam Moore-Young
“Looking Back” is an occasional look at MMEA’s past and the people and events that
have shaped it along the way.
Charlotte Koch Neuberger is one of the most interesting, talented, wildly funny
people I have ever had the pleasure to meet. Her story is, on the
one hand, too good to be true, and on the other hand,
mesmerizing. One anecdote led to another anecdote, and as I
listened, I forgot to take notes as I got so caught up in the story of
her life. And what a life it has been!
Any story begins with the parents. Charlotte’s mother came from
the Ukraine in 1917 at the age of 18, working in a sweatshop upon
arrival. Her father was a farm boy from New Jersey. Both parents
went to a Cooperative school in Arkansas where they worked in
exchange for an education. This is where they met and married.
From Arkansas they went to Michigan for awhile before traveling
back east where her father found a job with Breakstone/Kraft.
Charlotte was born in the Bronx. She particularly remembers the family
would go to the Catskills in the summer to get away from the polio epidemic. They