By Beth-Ellen Fand
Journal staff writer

Jersey Journal
1994 NORTH BERGEN - In the 1940s, a family was growing in Bronx.

Jacques Schor and his wife, Jennie, both Russian immigrants, became the parents of five children after settling in the borough.

Jacques supported the family by driving a cab and then becoming a Customs worker in New York. but he died at the age of 37. Thus started Jennie's career as a fur finisher, which lasted many decades as she raised her children alone.

She lost a 2-year-old daughter in a flu epidemic. Later, she saw two others marry and start their own families. She was proud when her son Sigmund became a medical aide in the Army and later a flight navigator in the Pacific during World War II.

In 1957, Jennie died, survived by three children, two sons-in-law and a daughter-in-law. The ranks of her grandchildren have since grown to 12.

Jennie also left a suitcase full of memories. But, somehow, it disappeared.

Her family had lost an important key to its history: a suitcase filled with photographs from the 1800s through the 1950s; Jennie's tax documents and furrier's union newsletters; paperwork for Jacques' funeral; correspondence; even Sigmund's leather-bound wedding album, dog tags and a Pearl Harbor flight chart.

Then Tommy Bertoli came along.

Bertoli, of T&T Developers, a carpentry and construction company in North Bergen, was cleaning out the attic of a closed Palisade Avenue supermarket when he found the suitcase in a pile of junk.

"That was the end of the work day once I found this," Bertoli said of the suitcase. "I was downstairs rummaging for hours through this thing. I just knew I had to get it back to somebody."

Looking for help in finding the Schor family, Bertoli called The Jersey Journal. A reporter's two-day search ended in a telephone conversation with Sigmund, who has since changed his last name to Shore, at his Stamford, Conn., home.

"I'm absolutely astounded," said Sigmund, now 74, married, the father of five children - and an independent movie producer. "Most of that material I haven't seen in maybe 25 years."

Sigmund said the suitcase must have been taken to the store by his sister, Millie Weiser, who, with her husband, ran the supermarket at 9019 Palisade Ave. for about 22 years.

Weiser and her husband closed the store and moved to Florida 21/a years ago, but their children live locally and were able to meet Bertoli to pick up the suitcase.

During the meeting at Bertoli's restaurant, Grappa, on Bergenline Avenue, Harriet Diener and Judie Celentano pored over the contents of the suitcase in amazement, their faces bearing an unmistakable resemblance to the baby pictures inside.

Both women seemed entranced with pictures of their grandfather, Jacques, whom they had never seen.

"It's so spooky to see someone who is so closely related," Diener said. "My mother kind of looks like him."

"You've given us our family history back," she told Bertoli. "I don't know how to thank you for that."

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