Generations

Here’s a riddle: What do the Ebola virus, a flight attendant, a military flyover, a tourist in Denver and someone in cardiac arrest over the Atlantic have in common? Answer: Aviation medicine. It’s a medical field that very few have heard of, but Dr. Yehezkel Caine has been involved with it for close to 50 years. The British-born doctor, now president of Jerusalem’s Herzog Medical Center, was already a qualified physician when he joined Israel’s Air Force, training as a pilot.

Last month, retired Judge Gary Jackson and other collaborators hosted “Cherry Creek 150 and the Untold Story, A Colorado Sesquicentennial Chronicle,” a presentation at The Daniels Fund Bldg. Panelists included Jackson and Gerard Rudofsky, whose family has lived in Cherry Creek North.

From his home in Winston Downs on Denver’s East Side, Jerry Streltzer cycles for practical reasons, like running errands in his part of town, as well as for pure enjoyment as he rides to the farthest reaches of the Denver metro area to explore and take in the scenery.

At about the time that Gil Schayes, 19, sprouted to his height of 6’5” — somewhere between seventh grade and his freshman year in high school, so grew the fortunes of the basketball program at Kent Denver, which Schayes has attended since 2021. This past basketball season ended with a state 4A title, beating Colorado Academy for the championship.

Last summer, Brig.-Gen. (ret.) Dr. Robert ‘Enz’ Enzenauer learned what life has been like for travelers in and out of Israel. The Denver pediatric ophthalmologist was finishing a volunteer trip to Israel. Over the course of 10 days at Soroka Hospital in Beersheba, he saw hundreds of patients and estimates he performed between 24 and 32 surgeries. He was ready to return to his family in Denver with a flight scheduled for Aug. 1, 2024. A friend from Haifa who had taken him on a whirlwind tour of the country dropped him off back at his hotel. “So I go to bed fat, dumb and happy,” he recounts. “Well, that’s when [Israel] killed [Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh] in Iran, and then bada bing, bada boom, Delta and United cancelled all their flights.”

Meeting Alan Golin Gass is like a journey through the 20th century and beyond. Sitting down with him in his mid-century landmarked home — which he designed— brings the journey …

At Shalom Park, it’s all about the quality of care, but the physical environment in which that care is given is also important. Shalom Park, which has its roots on Denver’s West Side as the Beth Israel Home for the Aged, moved to its sparkling new campus in southwest Aurora in 1992. It was described as “state-of-the-art” at the time — and it was. The new “Beth Israel Nursing Home at Shalom Park,” was designed to be home-like and non-institutional, providing privacy for its residents, easy access to the outdoors and soothing views of the mountains.

American travelers have been bombarded by reports of near-miss collisions all over the country’s airports, with air traffic controllers confounded by random communications blackouts. “Probably about half of the flights in the world originate or occur in the United States,” says Will Ris, a longtime governmental aviation expert who grew up in Denver.

Bob and Eric Green, teammates on MisHEAgas Bombers, are one of many father-son duos who play in the Denver Jewish Softball League. The Green tandem looks no further than their own bench to find another father-son set of teammates; Scott and Ethan Richardson also play for the Bombers.

An hour away from Denver, black entrepreneurs EC Regnier and Roger Ewalt in 1922 purchased land in Gilpin County, selling lots to black people from Denver and around the country, on which they could build summer getaway cabins. At the heart of this community, which existed from the 1920s to roughly the end of Jim Crow, was Winks Panorama Lodge, which last December was named a National Historic Landmark. Operated by Obrey “Winks” Hamlet and his wife Melba, the lodge, which included a lively tavern, hosted black luminaries of the day, from Langston Hughes to Duke Ellington.

Jewish educators, synagogues and outreach organizations in the Denver Metro area have realized there might be a better way to help these preteens enter Jewish adulthood with positive feelings about Judaism and the drive to live as Jews for the rest of their lives.

Dovie Heller shies away from discussing the endless community efforts he has engineered throughout the decades. So, we’ll let Heller’s lifelong friend and former Denver Rabbi Mordecai Twerski speak for him: “I’ve known him since childhood,” says Twerski, who now lives in Brooklyn “and his honesty and his commitment to the community, to the Jewish lifestyle, to his family, is impeccable.