Thursday, June 18th, was my parents’ 14th wedding anniversary, but I have no recollection of knowing that fact as a six-year-old. In fact, I have no memory of this day whatsoever other than my belief that the Supreme Court was reconvened to ask Manny Bloch to provide an eleventh reason why my parents should not be killed. I think I confused everything I heard about “eleventh hour appeals” with giving an “eleventh reason.”

On Wednesday morning, June 17th, Justice Douglas announced he was staying the executions and left for vacation. He did not rule on the merits of the new lawyers’ claim, but rather said that the petition must be considered by the District Court and then the Court of Appeals. This would add months, if not years, to my parents’ lives.

Early Tuesday morning, June 16th, Ben Bach drove us to meet our parents’ attorney, Manny Bloch, in Manhattan. From there Manny took us to Sing Sing prison, 30 miles to the north, for what would become our last visit with our parents.

Have you ever wondered why anniversaries that are multiples of 5 or 10 are more significant milestones than those that are multiples of other numbers? I wonder if we had six fingers, instead of five, whether a 24th wedding anniversary might be a bigger deal than the 20th, and if we had seven fingers a 49th might be much more important than a 50th.

“Were any of your supporters invested with Madoff?”

I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve been asked that question in the last few months.

At first, I could answer: “not that I know of.” Then I received the following letter from a supporter:

“Some time ago …. I had put my pension from thirty years work into an investment that was indirectly hooked into the Madoff fraud. [A]ll of [my] savings were stolen in this scheme. We’re struggling now to re-build some reserve and retain our sense of equanimity.”