Out of Grief, a Garden of Beauty and Peace
Howard Hinderstein understands, perhaps better than most of us, some of life’s lessons.
One is that life can be so very sweet.
Take the time he came home to Brooklyn after World War II. He was just 20 years old and his father, a gas station owner, greeted him with a gift--a canary yellow 1940 Plymouth convertible.
Life got better when a friend told him where to meet a certain beauty named Beverly. She was a model, and Howard loved to drive her into Manhattan for work. They got married and two wonderful daughters were born. And life stayed good, mostly, for many years to come, as Howard built a career as a show biz agent and manager, following talent from the Catskills to Hollywood and Las Vegas.
Another lesson is that life can be painfully unfair. Another is that, were it not for love, there would be no grief. And another is that tears can make a garden grow.
Nine years have passed since the Hindersteins’ daughter Sherry, then 37 and the mother of two, was found to be suffering from liver cancer. On the days when Howard and Beverly accompanied Sherry to the USC/Norris Cancer Hospital for chemotherapy, they would search for a quiet place to be alone with their thoughts.
Once they were pointed toward a narrow walkway that curled around the corner of the building, leading to a small area. Here were a couple of cement benches, a single picnic table, the whir of machinery, the odor of cigarettes stubbed in an ashtray.
This wasn’t what they had in mind. What they had in mind did not exist.
Now it does. Two weeks ago, Howard Hinderstein, now a widower alone in Tarzana, was joined by more than 100 friends and family members for the dedication of the Sherry Hinderstein Meditation Garden, a landscaped oasis of nearly 10,000 square feet completed seven years after her death.
The Hindersteins had established a memorial fund after Sherry’s death but for a year were uncertain how the money would be used. Then a hospital administrator told Howard how expansion plans included a meditation garden. “I knew from that day,” he recalls, “it was Sherry’s garden.”
The other day, Howard proudly offered a tour. It’s a young garden now. Workmen were still soldering a fencing that in time will be covered by ivy here, bougainvillea there, royal trumpet over there. Already it’s a quiet, pretty place with some flowering trees and irises in bloom. With a little imagination, one can envision the sanctuary that will be formed when the trees are mature.
Thirty white spire birch have been planted along with dozens of flowering trees--jacaranda, floss silk, Hong Kong orchid. Walkways of decomposed granite are trimmed with iris and plantings of daffodils and periwinkle. All year round, something will be in bloom, often with shades of yellow, Sherry’s favorite color. Two fountains have yet to be installed.
Water had been sprayed on a flower bed and a bit had puddled on one of the teakwood benches. We moved to the next. This bench bore a small plaque, with oblique allusions to the depth of Howard Hinderstein’s grief.
In memory of my precious wife Beverly
Beloved mother of Sherry Ellen
Adoring Nana of Alyse Danielle
and my best friend
Sherry’s illness and death was the first tragedy. On Jan. 1, 1993, Sherry’s daughter, Alyse Danielle, just 16 years old, died of an aneurysm near her kidneys.
And when Beverly took ill last September, the doctors diagnosed a brain aneurysm. But to hear Howard tell it, Beverly may have died from a broken heart, so great was her grief at losing Sherry and their only granddaughter.
Tears come when Howard tells the story. It was Sept. 7, Sherry’s birthday, so he and Beverly were planning to visit Sherry’s and Alyse’s graves at Mt. Sinai Cemetery. Howard went out to buy flowers and returned home to discover Beverly on the bathroom floor.
Beverly and Howard had always told each other they didn’t want to spend their last days unconscious in a hospital hooked up to life-support systems. Two days later, after talking with his surviving daughter, Debbi, Howard had the life support removed.
“Last Tuesday would have been our 48th anniversary.”
Beverly, he says, would have loved the dedication of the garden. Friends and family had gathered in a tent on the medical school campus. Some were old show-biz friends that he has known for 40 years.
Those were the days: Back in Brooklyn, Howard was still working 70 hours a week at his father’s gas station when he booked a young comic named Jackie Mason to a $25 gig at a Masonic Lodge. Later Howard would become personal manager for an unknown named Totie Fields and stayed with her for 18 years, including a long run as a Vegas headliner.
The named donors for Sherry’s garden include such friends as Don Rickles, Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme, Abby Lane and Florence Henderson and the widow of Bert Convy, Howard’s client until his death. When the stage show “Catskills on Broadway” appeared in Beverly Hills, Howard fittingly reserved more than 150 tickets to hold a fund-raiser.
At the dedication, a few friends mistakenly assumed that the campus grounds near the tent was the memorial. They were stunned, Howard says, by the scope of the creation. They were expecting, he says, “a little rose garden.”
Now, at 70, Howard finds himself staving off loneliness with phone calls and visits to Debbi’s family in the Bay Area. He’s making plans to visit friends in Florida. But he knows that before long he’ll come back to his Tarzana home, waking up alone and wondering what to do.
In time, he says, he may stage more events for the charity he’s renamed the Beverly and Sherry Hinderstein Memorial Fund for Cancer Research. And Howard knows he’ll keep visiting the garden. “When I go down to the garden, it’s like I belong.”
And it’s good to know, Howard says, that long after he’s made his last trip to Mt. Sinai, this garden will bloom, comforting those who yearn for a little beauty and peace.
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Scott Harris’ column appears Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays. Readers may write to Harris at the Times Valley Edition, 20000 Prairie St., Chatsworth, CA 91311. Please include a phone number.
