‘Legacies,’ Writing Contest for People Over 60, Offers Prizes for Memoirs : Generations: Entrants are urged to tell a tale they’d want their great-grandchildren to know: a turning point, triumph or tragedy.

Tell a story you’d want your great-grandchildren to know.

That’s the idea behind Legacies, a writing contest open to anyone over 60: Tell about a turning point, triumph, tragedy, something that changed your life.

Writing these stories down preserves them “in a way that enriches our lives by their remembrance and becomes a catalyst for other people’s lives to change,” says Maury Leibovitz, a philanthropist who funded the contest.

More than 500 entries have already been received. They include chronicles of pogroms, a care package, destiny, matchmaking--even a pony tale.

Joseph Carlin recalled that as a child during the Russian Revolution he hid in fields of thick wheat when the czar’s soldiers rode into his small town of Timkowvitch to pillage, maim, rape and kill.

“The Jewish population was their main target, but if anyone of any other denomination would try to interfere . . . they too became a target,” Carlin, 80, wrote. “This was called a pogrom.

“Many mornings after such a raid I would see wagons loaded with the dead . . . being carted away to be buried in a common grave . . . (sometimes) children with whom I had, only the day before, been playing with.

“I grew up very quickly,” he wrote. “To this day I will never forget what I witnessed as a small child. (It) taught me to be tolerant, understanding and kind.”

Leo Dawer was a refugee in Bucharest, Romania, right after World War II. “There was no food. Twice a week you had to stand in line, waiting five to six hours for half a bread,” he wrote.

One day he got a package mailed from Evansville, Ill. “I don’t know anyone in Evansville! How did they know my address? This was surely a miracle! This package had everything: sugar, chocolate. This food saved me from hunger for months to come,” he wrote.

But that night he remembered.

After being released from a labor camp he had been given a jacket donated by an American family. In the pocket Dawer found a note: “Whoever receives this jacket, please write to us and tell us how it fits.”

“I knew a little English and undertook the task to answer,” he wrote. Months went by and he forgot about his letter--until the package arrived.

When he came to America four years later he lost the family’s address. But, he wrote, “I will never forget their gesture of generosity.”

Helen Bayer played matchmaker for her widowed mother in the late 1940s. She asked her Brooklyn neighbors to suggest eligible men and then contacted each one to set up a meeting with her 62-year-old mom.

The first man “sat down at the table, took out a pencil and paper and the first words out of his mouth was: ‘How much money do you have?’ ” she wrote. “Mom got up from her chair and chased him out of the house.”

After other unsuccessful efforts the lady next door told her about a recent widower. “She told me that he was the shamas (sexton) of a nearby shul (synagogue), was very religious and that he would be good for Mom.”

The initial meeting went well; wedding bells followed after his year of mourning.

“Now my job was finished,” Bayer wrote. “They loved and respected each other and got along very well. The marriage lasted 18 1/2 years.”

Ellen Henriette Schwarz was a 5-year-old in Aachen, Germany, just after World War I when her nursemaid took her to visit a big fair in Stolberg, 20 kilometers away.

“Getting out of the train I insisted very stubbornly to get a glass of lemonade,” she wrote. The nursemaid “finally gave in and went with me to the refreshment stand in the little waiting room.”

Suddenly she was knocked down by the blast from a tremendous explosion outside.

An ammunition factory had blown up and “hundreds of people were killed in the factory and in the town itself,” she said. “Telephone poles and trees were uprooted, houses collapsed, the town looked like a battlefield.

“My desire to have a glass of lemonade at exactly this time--and therefore finding shelter in the waiting room--saved my life. I believe in destiny,” Schwarz, 77, wrote.

Sara Lee Evans, 80, recalled that her husband acquired a small pony in the summer of 1967 which they kept in their yard in Brooklyn. One day the owner of the corner fruit store asked if they would bring the pony to his house to visit his 15-year-old son, who had muscular dystrophy. They agreed.

When they arrived the mother carried the boy in, his withered limbs hanging limp. Then he saw the surprise.

“His pale, drawn face lit up and glowed with excitement. His dark brown eyes sparkled with an inner enthusiasm that he could not express verbally,” she wrote. “His mouth opened wide in an expression of sheer joy as he stretched his arm to touch the little pony.

“When she licked his twisted fingers with her rosy pink tongue he threw back his head and uttered sounds of obvious delight.”

When the time came to leave, she wrote, “We felt both uplifted and saddened by our experience.”

The contest continues until July 15. It is open to anyone over 60 living in the United States and is sponsored by the Jewish Assn. for Services for the Aged. Entries, not to exceed two typed or handwritten pages, should be sent to Legacies, care of JASA, 40 West 68th St., New York, N.Y. 10023.

Include name, address, age and phone number.

A panel of judges will select the top 37 stories. First prize is $1,000, second prize $500 and there are 35 third prizes of $100.