SOMA Living August 2021

MEET THE COHEN FAMILY This month’s feature story is a little different as it looks back to 1947 when the Cohen family moved to Maplewood from the Weequahic section in Newark. At that time Ben was 3, Carrie was 7 months and Tom would come along three years later. The siblings reminisced about growing up in SOMA and the changes they’ve seen over the last 74 years. Aside from leaving for college and living elsewhere shortly after graduation, the siblings have spent the majority of their lives in SOMA, and several of their adult children and many of their grandchildren currently live in town. Joan Oppenheimer Cohen grew up in South Orange and actually met her future husband Ben at Grunings Ice Cream Shop in South Orange after school one day, while they were both students at Columbia High School. They were the first to move back to Maplewood in 1973, followed by Carrie and her husband Dave Wells who grew up in Englewood, N.J. “We knew we wanted to move to Maplewood and more specifically, we really wanted to live on the same block as Joan and Ben. So we found a home around the corner in 1976 and have been here ever since,” Dave shared. Tom and his wife Donna moved to South Orange from West Orange in 1983 because Donna, originally from Queens, really wanted their kids to go to the same schools as their cousins. Tom joked, “We also didn’t want to buy a home anywhere else, but I knew I didn’t want to live on the same street as my siblings. We frequently walk to their homes and just did so for this interview at Joan and Ben’s house.” Going back in time, “Our towns were really a suburb of Newark and didn’t have an urban feel in any way. Back then people moved here from Newark or Irvington instead of from Manhattan or Brooklyn as is often the case today. Interstate 280 didn’t exist yet. Remember that the entire Interstate Highway System in the U.S. was built in the 1950’s and 1960’s. It wasn’t until the mid-1990s when the mid town direct train line was instituted that people started moving from the New

Photography by Jamie Meier

Left to Right: Tom, Carrie & Ben

Left to Right: Dave, Tom & Ben Left to Right: Carrie, Joan & Donna

AUGUST 2021 | SOMA LIVING 7

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