My mom has traced our family’s roots to Azrian, Poland where my fourth great grandparents Yosef (Joseph) and Bella Potocki lived. The origin of the name means sweet or possibly a beekeeper. This was during the reign of Nicholas I (Nikolai). They had two known sons, Gershon born in 1839 and Yankev-Hersch. Boys were prized, they were more important in the faith. A boy means more help on the farm and a future income barer. In the old country a Booba (midwife) delivered the babies. Gershon (George) met and married Rachel Leah Knobel. Marriage was a holy institution and the celebration would last for days. Jews kept to themselves as a community for support. It was common that cousins would marry. It is not known how certain relatives are doubly related, a tradition that carried to America. Jews didn’t have many rights. They couldn’t own land, they couldn’t have a liquor license and they were at the bottom of the human rights level. They rented land and had their own cow for milk, chickens for eggs, etc. If you were late with the rent, the landlord would come and take household items like pots or linens that were needed items. They lived in a modest home with a brick oven for cooking. On shabbos they could not light a fire, so they would prepare the food ahead of time, and the amber’s from the fire that was lit earlier would cook the food for a day. From 1882 – 1886 there was famine in Russia. The way of survival was to barter. The art was is the deal. If you had a surplus of food or had a service, you would trade that for something you needed. Afternoon tea was a tradition when the adults had time to discuss business. Children would drink chicory in their milk. A kosher home kept two sets of dishes, dairy and meat. Prayers were said in the morning and in the evening. The family lived in the shtetle of Lacotch, Odessa in Russian Occupied Poland. It was in the province of Volhynia. My family escaped from the Russian Czar Alexander III and his army. The Russians blamed the assassination of their czar, Alexander II, on Jews. This was the start of many pogroms, government-sanctioned attacks & planned persecutions, against the Jews.

    Gershon smuggled a Torah through from the homeland. This Torah would be the quintessential part of the Jewish Brotherhood of Kings Park. They immigrated to America in 1887. Grover Cleveland was the current president of the United States during this era. An emigration officer at Castle Garden A.K.A. Castle Clinton in NYC changed the family name to Patiky. Gershon & Rachel Leah were 48 years of age, their 6 children’s names and ages were Ida - 23, Elia - 19, Max - 13, Rebecca (Becky) - 11, Jake - 9 & Sam - 4. The oldest Ida, didn’t come over at this time. She was married to Jacob Okst and they had baby Rose. They arrived by steam ship to New York City, America. It was a long month’s journey, and an adventure crossing over the Austrian border to catch the steam ship in Hamburg. The passage over the Atlantic Ocean took seventeen days. Their accommodations were a large Steerage cabin with many bunks. The people would get seasick from the rolling of the ship. They stood outside, and the waves would wash the decks. When the family embarked and looked back they we amazed to see that the ship was six stories high. Now they were to begin a new life in a new land that they couldn’t understand. Gershon was a free man in a free country. But now he would have to provide for his large family. My third great grandfather Gershon settled with his family in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Gershon was a 6’ tall, 200 pound, strong looking man with red cheeks and a strawberry blond beard. He had a smiling face and a wonderful disposition. Beards are considered holy to hasidic Jews, citing a Biblical passage that forbids "touching a blade to the skin." My third great grandmother Rachel Leah was a wise and petite 100-pound woman with high cheekbones. She wore a babushka, was very generous and a great cook. They didn’t like city life, so in 1889, they came out to Long Island and rented a barn in Dix Hills. In Poland Gershon was a builder and a farmer. In Dix Hills the family lived in one half of the barn, and the animals lived in the other half. They soon bought a farm in Elwood with a large twenty-room house. This was before electricity and indoor plumbing. They were one of the first Jews to settle on Long Island. Every child had its responsibilities. Their son, Sam, had to go to the city by horse a wagon to bring back kosher foods to eat. He would buy extra and sell the food to make a profit along the way home.

    They stayed on the farm until 1897, and then moved seven miles to the Flats of Kings Park. The family made their living off the Kings Park State Hospital, peddling a variety of goods and they opened up a general store. The men and boys peddled and the women and girls sewed and took care of the shop. Though Gershon & his sons were poor, they gave a hand to anyone that needed to get started on their new life in America. Gershon would buy a horse and wagon for peddling and would be reimbursed when the person made back the money from their sales. It seems that if you were Jewish, you were a relative. And if you weren’t you’d become one soon enough. Eventually everyone married into the Patiky family. It was a small and close knit community. One of the most annoying problems was gossip. That’s the down side of living in a small community, that everyone knows every body and every thing. Some family broke away from others because of the embarrassment of public drunkenness and breaking tradition by marrying goyim (non-Jews.) If a child married a non-Jew, the father went to temple and said a prayer for the dead. You would be disowned and you didn’t count anymore, it’s the ultimate sin. But it was okay to have non-Jewish friends and there were many that helped out the family. Some family stayed Orthodox while others didn’t. The Patiky’s spoke many languages - Russian, Polish, Hebrew, Yiddish & English.

    Jacob bought a 200 room old abandoned railroad barracks know as the Flats for $25. He rented out each of these apartments for @$5 month. They were unheated and had no electricity. Ida had two more children here in America, our first naturalized citizens Betty (Bess) born 1904 and George born 1905. Jacob sent for his parents in 1907. Jacob moved out of that building to near the hospital grounds. He took over a stationary business from his brother-in-law Max. In 1917 the great Kings Park fire destroyed the family businesses. The Kings Park family stores that were destroyed were Patiky Department Store, Jake Glass’ Dry Goods, and Jacob Okst’s grocery store. Other family stores existed that survived were Michael Patiky’s feed & grain store. After the devastation the family came back with bigger stores in a new business district of Kings Park. Our name still lives on today, the following are streets named after relatives long gone. In Kings Park, Okst Street is named after Jacob Okst. Patiky Street is named after Elias Patiky. In Greenlawn, Bellerose Avenue is named after my two aunts, Bella & Rose. In East Northport the following streets are named after my cousins: Max Johnson Street, Bessie Johnson Street, Abe Johnson Street, Harry Johnson street and Irving Johnson Street.

    Gershon had an open house for any Jewish traveler or peddler who wanted to have a service. Following the service Rachel Leah would treat everyone with kiddish and holidays with Kreplach before they left for their homes. Gershon would be responsible for hiring a Rabbi to teach the children Hebrew, a Cantor to sing the prayers at services and a Shecht with a Kabola to slaughter the animals for Kosher meat. He would find one person qualified to do all of this, because he had to be thrifty. In Europe it was a customary thing to have a Mikva in the home for sanitary purposes. Gershon built one in the cellar of his home for the different holidays. It was 10’ by 6’ and had a coal heated boiler that heated the water supplied by the well. It had steps to walk down like a swimming pool to 7’ deep.

    Because the Indian Head farm (an Agricultural school for Jewish immigrants), the Patikys did well at their store. Elia & Jacob organized the Jewish Brotherhood of Kings Park Congregation In 1904. In 1907 they bought a small piece of land from the Indian Head farm of the Baron de Hirsch foundation to make a cemetery. It was the burial grounds for the congregation. They had a policy of burying any Jewish person from Kings Park that couldn’t afford a burial. This is our family cemetery. The Jews from the Indian Head Farm would come over and the large house started to seem small, for the popularity of Gershon’s services. In 1908 Gershon and his sons, Elia, Max, Jake, Sam & son-in-law Jacob Okst built the first shul on Long Island. It was located on the corner of Patiky & Okst Streets in the Flats of Kings Park. It was called the Jewish Brotherhood Jewish Center. Next door ,the original house of Gershon & Rachel Leah was sold to the congregation to use as a youth clubhouse. From 1908 until 1962 the shul was the center of life for the Jewish Community of Kings Park. It went from Orthodox to Conservative services through the years. It was a place that baby boys had their Bris, Folks wed in tradition, Bar Mitzvahs and Funeral Services were held. In 1962 a fire destroyed the original Synagogue and it was rebuilt on 25A in 1967. The new shul is called the Kings Park Jewish Center. A plaque on the wall of the synagogue is in memorial of my relatives.

    In 1918-19, Irving Meyers, at the age of 22-23, served in the U.S. army in WWI as a first class private. He was in the second battalion COE52 pioneer Infantry in France. It took 8 days on the USS Great Northern to arrive there. Irving sang in army shows all around France during his service. Relatives from all over came to see the marriage of my great grandparents, Dora Okst and Irving Meyers. The ceremony was held in the Jewish Brotherhood Jewish Center, in 1920. There was no electricity everyone held candles. It was a true orthodox wedding. The men and women were separate, the women sat up in the balcony. Jacob Okst, the father of the bride, walked seven times around the bride (this represents the number of times you wind the ribbon around the Torah after reading the portion of the week and putting it back into the ark.) They would say seven blessings for a new married couple. There was a reception, which followed afterwards.

    In 1923 both Rachel Leah and Gershon (George) passed away. As tradition they were buried in a plain pine box within 24 hrs of death. There would be no flowers (it represents happiness) or pregnant women (you can’t mix death with a new life). The relatives wore black and said prayers at the cemetery followed by each loved one putting a shovel of dirt in the grave upside down (this represents that you didn’t mean for this to happen). Afterwards a relative had have loved ones and friends back at the house to sit shiver. Shiver lasted seven days, the mirrors were covered and the men went in a room to say prayers. The women brought over a dish for the grieving family and guests. On the anniversary of the death there was the unveiling of the tombstone. A prayer was said and the loved ones placed a pebble on the stone (this represented that you were there.) Today we can still visit them at the King Park Jewish Brotherhood cemetery.

    Dora & Irving had three sons Norman born 1922, George born 1924 & my grandfather Ralph born 1927. Seven days following the birth of each boy, there was a Bris. In 1931 Irving died at the age of 35. He was out of town while doing business as a surgical garment salesman. Dora became a widow young and had to support herself and her family. So She went into the trade of her husband and sold off his samples. She opened a store in Kings Park named Dora Meyers Corset Shop. Dora continued to keep a kosher home and Jewish traditions. However she did break one tradition. When a widow or widower had young children, they were encouraged to re-marry soon after for the welfare of the children. Dora was a businesswoman and put all of her energy into that and raised her sons on her own. Aunt Etta, the matriarch of the family, helped out in the store. During the Great Depression, in the 1930’s, times were hard for the Kings Park Jewish center. It was open only for the high holy days: The Jewish New Year, Sukkoth, Rosh Hashanah, Passover, Yom Kippur and Chanukah. In 1935 Dora lost her father Jacob Okst. In 1940, Ralph was Bar Mitzvahed at the Kings Park Jewish Center at the age of 13, the aunts got together and had a party. Then in 1947 Dora lost her mother Ida. The store moved to Huntington town, a bigger town with more traffic. A fire totally destroyed the store in 1957. The business was replaced and had a grand opening soon after. It was a successful and very well respected business. Uncle George sold it in the 1980’s, but it is still in existence today.

    My parents Susan & Barry met in 1977. Barry was 1/4 Jewish on his maternal mother side, which meant he was Jewish (Jewishness is passed on through the mother.) But since neither of them had a religious background they had a Congregational wedding. In 1980, they wed at the Church in the Gardens in Forest Hills, Queens, NY. The church was a quaint stone building. The bride wore a traditional white cathedral length gown and the groom a contemporary powder blue rented tux. They sang a song "Longer" during the ceremony. The reception followed at Le Cordon Bleu caters. 130 guests were present. The honeymoon was a week cruise to Bermuda on the USS Volendam (a very different experience than the ancestors had.) Susan worked in offices, then stayed home with the kids. She had a photography business in the basement and works at a camp as the art director. Barry is a teacher & coach. He is an athletic director in the summer. After a few years they bought a home in Brooklyn, NY, where they had 3 children: (myself) Shannon 1983, Tristan 1985 and April 1989.

    The following information came from Sam Clark’s autobiography, Irving Meyers Diary, Death certificates, Newspaper articles, and many relatives’ oral history memories. See newspaper articles for supporting information.