50th wedding anniversary

This photograph was taken in 1997, there was a famous restaurant in Ulus inside the park, it was taken there.  Our son-in-law and daughter took us for our 50th wedding anniversary.
The ones in the picture, me Jak Rutli, my granddaughter Selin Baruh, my son-in-law Jojo Baruh, my daughter Stina Baruh and my wife Ceni Rutli.  What I remember about that night, we had a wonderful evening.  We ate, listened to music, we had such fun, had a lovely evening.
This is how my wife and I met.  I had a friend, Izi Goldenberg who was the owner of Grundig radios and televisions.  He used to manufacture gloves before, gloves for men and women.  He was at Sultanhamam in the five fingers building.  We also founded Rutli-Goldenberg, an agency specializing in hardware but it did not work afterwards.  My current wife was working in a shirt store around there.  When Goldenberg was working on gloves, she came one day to buy a pair and we met there.  I helped her carry the package she bought, we took it to the store.  She was a beautiful woman, would you date me, I said.  Yes, I will date you, she said, but not alone.  I had friends, we went out together.  We went out one or two times.  Later we continued.  After a while she started asking about marriage.  I said, I cannot marry before my sister is married.  She told this to her mother.  Her mother said, ask if she has money.  She came to me and asked, does your sibling have money.  I told her that the older brothers that are in the United States and the ones here, they will all give.  She then told me I have a doctor.  If your sister gets engaged, I will enter your house too, I want to get engaged too.  I said, o.k.   We made a date at a bakery in Beyoglu, so they can meet.  My older sister came with my older brother, and I with Ceni, and doctor Sami Reytan came alone because he did not have a father or such.  He was a good man, later on he became an internist, they liked each other a lot.  They decided, came to our house, got engaged and later on married.  They got married and we got married.
The wedding went very well.  There was no evening party.  We got married, we immediately went home, undressed, changed, took a small suitcase and went immediately to the hotel. We went to Heybeli ada (the third one of the Princess islands, on the Marmara sea, south of Istanbul) for our honeymoon.  We stayed at a hotel there, Halki Palas, it was a nice hotel, the food was very good.

We had two children.  I have a deceased son. Norbert Noah Rutli.  My father's name.   He was born exactly 9 months after we were married.  She became pregnant from the first night. Later on we went to Israel because he was sick.  He had a debilitating illness.  We stayed there.  He had an infirmity in his spine, there was a germ.  At the time I contacted Switzerland and the U.S.A.  Switzerland asked for a lot of money then.  Finally I got in touch with the ambassador and took him to Israel.  There were the sons of my father's sister there. We stayed at their house.  He stayed in the hospital for one year. I stayed here during that time, my wife stayed there with the cousins.  At the time, the biggest professor in the United States who happened to be Jewish, had come to Israel for a visit.  We wrote to him and I don't know how many thousands of dollars he asked for. My son had to stay 6 more months in the hospital then.  The doctor saw my son, why should he stay, let me operate and you take him with you, he said.  And he died during the operation.  But I think it was a mistake, I was not there.  It was what they call a shock operation.  Now, they had to put him  under before entering the operating room.  They brought my son the operating room without putting him to sleep. When my son saw the operating room and the lights, he went into shock and died.  Before putting him under the knife.  He was 5.5 years old when he died.  This illness started when he was 3.

After my son's incident, my wife could not get pregnant for a long time.  From stress and anxiety.  Then G-d granted it.  My daughter Stina Rutli was born in 1956 in Istanbul.
When Stina was little, she ate with so much difficulty, that we did not want to have any more children.  The same morsel in her mouth for hours, we would say a birdie is flying, she still would not swallow.

We spoke in French with Norbert. He was very smart.  While his mother read in French, he would memorize it. We spoke in Turkish with Stina.  She does not know Judeo Espagnol at all.  We could not send her to a Jewish school- she attended a private elementary school in Pangalti, I do not remember the name, that school doesn't exist any more.  She attended junior high in Saint-Pulcherie. She learned French there.  My cousin Eli Rozental was a teacher there.  He was a French teacher.
We raised our child according to Jewish traditions.  Even today, we celebrated the first night of Passover in Stina's house

Stina married Yusuf Jojo Baruh at the age of 18.  On June 1st, 1974.  Yusuf has a store about electricity on Bankalar caddesi(Banks street). She had a daughter named Selin and a son named Ediz. Ediz is 27 years old, Selin is 25.