One of them was Eddie Bernstein, who was about 13 years old at the time. Just before Christmas of 1911, the Pensacola Journal published two dozen letters that some local children had written to Santa Claus. The following year, Eddie was sent to Atlanta, Georgia, where he was fitted for prosthetic legs. According to the Pensacola Journal, which reported on the accident, Eddie’s father Nathan Bernstein received over $12,000 in damages. In October 1911, his father successfully sued the L&N Railroad. It was thought that he would not survive.Īpparently, Eddie pulled through. An engine pulling two box cars ran over him, leaving his legs so mangled that they were amputated above the knee. It was there, when Eddie was eleven years old, that he lost his legs while playing on the train tracks. At the end of the story, she shook her head and said, “I used to feel so sorry for him sitting there on the street…Shoot, the man had more money than I got.”Įdward Bernstein was born around 1900 in Atlanta, Georgia to Russian Jewish immigrant parents who later moved the family to Pensacola, Florida. She recalled giving her children coins to give to the monkey, who entertained them with antics and then handed his take over to the beggar. Nash told the story of a monkey buried in Aspin Hill that belonged to a legless beggar on the street in Washington, D.C. The reporter interviewed Nash’s widow, Martha, who was still running the cemetery at the time. Alfred Nash, former owner of the cemetery, had passed away. I was first alerted to the story of Eddie “The Monkey Man” Bernstein while reading an article written in 1979 in the Montgomery Journal. How a panhandler was able to afford a funeral and burial in a pet cemetery is an interesting question. Somewhere in Aspin Hill Memorial Park lie the remains of a monkey named Gypsy, the companion of a legless beggar on the streets of Washington, D.C. Reprinted with permission of the DC Public Library, Star Collection © Washington Post Her skillful portrayal of T.J., a conflicted adolescent struggling with her identity and reacting to family pressures, will resonate with readers.Eddie Bernstein with his monkey, Gypsy, ca. In this thought-provoking companion to the popular Do You Know the Monkey Man?, author Dori Hillestad Butler has created a highly readable, complex portrait of a family in crisis. Now she must confront the truth about her family, even if it hurts the people she loves. in another web of lies, however, her loyalties are finally tested. When Joe suffers a debilitating accident and tries to ensnare T.J. But while she is drawn to her new family, she is also wary of becoming attached to them and hurting her father's feelings. reluctantly visits her mom and Sam for the first time, she is stunned by how similar she is to her twin sister in many ways, even though their lives have been very different. loves him and the grandmother who has provided stability in her life. Joe's erratic lifestyle has meant lying to social workers and searching through garbage cans for food. Life with Joe, her troubled but well-intentioned father, is all T.J. always believed that her twin sister and her mother were dead-because that's what her father had told her. What happens when everything you thought was true about your life turns out to be a lie?
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