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Notable New     Yorkers
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Mary LaskerMary Lasker
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my father was very shy and very conservative, and how they finally got together is really astonishing to me. I think my mother's cousin, Mrs. Fellows, must have worked quite hard on them.

Q:

It seems that a woman of such spirit and such boundless energy would have found a little Midwestern town much too limiting.

Lasker:

Oh, she was very distressed, but she was very much in love with my father, who was very reliable, very responsible and very silent. I can't quite describe it. It wasn't silence out of bad temper or irritability; it wasn't a pay-out at all for anyone else's behavior. He just naturally didn't have a need to talk. And her vivacity, I think, stimulated him. He seemed to have no inner need to speak but his word, when he gave it, was good. He was completely reliable as far as all the people who dealt with him in business went, and if you got him to say you could do something, you could do it, that was settled. He had a charming smile. He didn't seem to be depressed at all. He was just silent. He loved natural beauty but didn't have any feeling for art at all, and he had no interest in decoration or in museums or anything except naturally beautiful scenery. And my mother's interest in everything was a kind of whim of hers as far as he was concerned.

Q:

What was his ethnic background?





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