I was born Tyna L. Simrin in 1935.  I attended Kindergarten through High School in Far Rockaway, Ellenville, N.Y. and the Bronx.  I then attended Brooklyn College Long Island where I took secretarial classes in the Business School.

 

In 1960 I married my late husband S. Gordon Strenger.  We lived in Manhattan until 1972 when we moved to Huntington and joined the Huntington Jewish Center.  At HJC, I served on the Hebrew School (now Religious School), and several Boards of Trustees and notably became the congregation’s first woman president.

 

If anyone were to ask me what is the best gift(s) ever received, I would have to say ‘my life.’ With my parents and older brother, it began as a life guided by love and respect. Always happy? Of course not. Always having positive connections to hang on to? Absolutely. Must have gotten that outlook from Mom. When I was six years old she was hospitalized with tuberculosis for three years and still had an upbeat attitude. My brother and I spent those years with different family members, sometimes together and sometimes not, which is why my school years show me bouncing around. The greatest tragedy of the next years was my Dad suddenly dying at age 53...seemed old to me then even though I knew it wasn’t.

 

Gordon, my husband, and I had three daughters while we were living in “the City.” Although we attended local synagogues on the Upper West Side, we were not members of any particular one. It was when we moved and joined Huntington Jewish Center that we became part of a formal Jewish community…and what a good move that was.

 

Almost immediately upon joining, our daughters, Mara and Dorie, were enrolled in Sunday School and our daughter Aliza in Hebrew School. I was invited to a Sisterhood new member social, where I met women who would become friends for life. Don’t even get me started on the “Kitchen Activities.” Gordon began to participate in the Men’s Club and made his mark there. As the girls’ grew, they became interested in Young Judaea and, on graduating from Walt Whitman High School, they each went on a one year course of study to Israel. Eventually two of them made Aliyah which is significant because although this wasn’t the reason that Gordon and I made our first trip to Israel, it certainly prompted the dozens more in the years ahead. That, and visiting with our Israeli American grandchildren.

 

Gordon was in sales in the music and bookstore market, where I worked with him. We eventually started our own business, requiring us to travel around the country seeing customers and exhibiting at trade shows. As we made many friendships that we’ve kept over the years it has been with HJC and HJC Sisterhood that I have been blessed with so many “like family” connections and have satisfied the basic human need of being “needed.”