[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 171 (Wednesday, November 1, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S16511-S16512]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
REUBEN COHEN
Ms. SNOWE. Mr. President, last week I submitted for the Record
my personal statement concerning Reuben Cohen--the father of my friend
and colleague from Maine, Senator Bill Cohen--who passed away in
Bangor, ME, earlier this month.
Today, I would like to submit for the Record several items that
appeared in the Bangor Daily News following Ruby's death.
The first is an article about Ruby's life that appeared 2 days after
his death.
The second is an editorial that pays tribute to Ruby's well-known and
admired work ethic.
And the third is an article about funeral services that were held in
Bangor which contains many appropriate statements from family and
friends about this remarkable man.
I believe these items remember Ruby as he was--someone who brought a
lot of life into his community, and a lot of love into his family:
The material follows:
[From the Bangor Daily News, Oct. 11, 1995]
Ruby Cohen Dies in Bangor
senator's father ran local bakery for nearly 70 years
(By John Ripley)
Bangor.--A few years ago, Oklahoma Sen. David Boren needed
to talk with Maine Sen. William Cohen, his colleague on the
Intelligence Committee who was home in Bangor. So he called
Reuben Cohen, the senator's father.
``Well, if you're chairman of the Intelligence Committee,''
Cohen barked into the telephone, ``you should be able to find
him yourself.''
And he hung up.
The story is vintage Cohen.
Cohen--baker, husband, father of three children--died late
Monday. He was 86.
Reuben ``Ruby'' Cohen is survived by his wife of 58 years,
Clara; two sons, William and Robert; a daughter, Marlene
Beckwith; and seven grandchildren.
Those who knew Ruby Cohen agree that he died the way he
would have wanted: He was found at 9:45 p.m. by a worker at
his store, The Bangor Rye Bread Co., where he had been making
the next day's batch of rolls and bagels.
To many, Cohen is known best as the father of Bill, now the
state's senior U.S. senator. But as proud as he was of his
eldest son and all of his children, Cohen enjoyed a
reputation of his own as a man of ornery independence, who
wasn't above a little mischief every now and then.
In 1974, when the U.S. House of Representatives was
deciding whether to impeach President Nixon for his Watergate
shenanigans, the press followed then-Rep. William Cohen to
Maine, dogging him about how he would vote.
The young congressman shrugged off the questions with ``no
comment.'' Then, from the rear of the pack, came a gravelly
voice.
``Billy says he's guilty as hell!''
It was Ruby Cohen.
He was a throwback to the days of smoky pool halls,
Saturday night fights and dollar haircuts, when Bangor was a
cauldron of ethnic neighborhoods and when friends were
friends for life. Like many men of his generation, Cohen was
held in awe by those who watched him work 18 hours a day, six
days a week, for nearly 70 years.
Hunched over and with hands like shoe leather at the end of
his beefy baker's forearms, Cohen would start his day as
everyone else's was ending.
Work would begin around 8:30 p.m., when he would prepare
the dough for the bulkie rolls, rye bread, French bread,
Italian sandwich rolls, and bagels. Surrounded by 100-pound
sacks of flour, sugar and corn meal, he would work quietly
through the night, guided by recipes long ago committed to
memory.
Early the next morning, he would pile overflowing paper
grocery bags into the back of his battered station wagon and
head out on his rounds. He would shuffle into a client's
store or restaurant, drop off his goods, occasionally sit
down for a quick cup of piping-hot coffee, and then be on his
way.
``I guess you could say he worked to live and lived to
work,'' Sen. Cohen said Tuesday after flying home from
Washington, D.C. ``He wanted to work until he died, and he
did.''
With little prodding, Cohen could be lured into
conversation, treating everyone to his unhesitating opinions
on everything from the big bang theory to Celtics basketball
to Workers' Compensation.
Despite the ravages of age and occasional illness, Cohen
could never be kept from his work.
In April 1979, a train derailed near Cohen's shop on
Hancock Street, leading police to block off the neighborhood.
Cohen somehow was able to sneak in, grab some rolls, and head
out as always.
When his son was sworn into the U.S. Senate, Cohen
grudgingly flew down to Washington, watched the ceremony,
then returned to work.
``That's the only time he ever went down,'' Sen. Cohen
said.
Even on Tuesday, as family and friends grieved Cohen's
passing, the rolls and breads were delivered.
``When you think of Bangor, you think of the standpipe, the
Paul Bunyan statue, and Ruby Cohen,'' said U.S. Rep. John
Baldaccis, a lifelong friend.
The Baldaccis, as with a handful of other families in town,
go back more than half a century with the Cohens.
Grandfathers knew grandfathers, fathers knew fathers, some
know sons.
A lover of jazz, Cohen was known in his younger years as a
sharp dresser who would dance the night away at the old
Chateau ballroom, now the site of a renovation project across
from City Hall. Though not a large man, he could be
fearless--he once decked a man who later became a bodyguard
for a California mobster.
It was at a dance hall that he met Clara, then a 16-year-
old Irish girl. They courted, and then married in 1937--not a
small thing for a Jewish man in those days.
``I guess he wasn't too much concerned about what anyone
thought about it,'' Sen. Cohen said.
To Cohen, life was about devotion to work, family and
friends.
For years, he and Clara would eat dinner at different
restaurants with Abe and Frieda Miller, his childhood
friends.
Like his own son, Bobby, Ruby followed in his father's
flour-dusted footsteps. Born Jan. 8, 1909, in New York City,
Ruby was essentially raised in Bangor, where his father, who
emigrated from Russia, owned a bakery. As with Bangor Rye
Bread, the New York Model Bakery was a family affair, where
everyone chipped in to bake bread in an old, coal-fired oven.
``It's a family of hard workers,'' Frieda Miller said.
Cohen expected the same of his own children.
Bobby still works at the store, Marlene is married to
another baker, and Bill is known to lend a hand when he's in
town from Washington.
``Billy works here once in a while . . . when he's
campaigning,'' Ruby once joked.
Sen. Cohen often tells of scoring 43 points in a high
school basketball game at Bangor Auditorium. Expecting praise
from his father, Ruby instead replied, ``If you hadn't missed
those two foul shots, you'd've had 45!''
Over the years, the Cohen bakeries could be found on Essex
Street and then on Hancock, not far from the current
location. Through it all--the Depression, World War II, urban
renewal, generations come and gone--Cohen was a fixture in
the Queen City.
``I was bred on his bread,'' Bangor restaurateur Sonny
Miller said Tuesday. ``Ruby was just one of a kind--just a
real fine gentleman.''
At his father's 80th birthday party in 1989, Sen. Cohen
arranged for video messages from President Reagan and
President-elect George Bush, among other dignitaries. As much
as he appreciated the attention, Cohen was a man who thought
as little of pretension and ego as he did of frozen bagels.
``If you come out to Los Angeles and see the Dodgers,''
manager Tommy Lasorda said in a telephone call that day,
``I'd like to meet you.''
``I hope you can,'' Cohen replied.
If Cohen's work ethic and wit were the stuff of reputation,
his driving habits were legend.
``There's an old Bangor saying that you don't know Ruby
Cohen until he hits your car,'' U.S. Sen. Olympia Snowe once
joked.
Cohen himself once told of being stopped by a Bangor police
officer, who didn't know that the baker's old Ford station
wagon could be found traveling the city streets at all hours
of night and day.
Suspecting that Cohen might have been drinking, the cop
asked the octogenarian to recite the alphabet. Cohen did--
backward.
Only in recent months, as his health began to slip, did
Cohen relent and allow someone else to drive on the morning
rounds.
[[Page S 16512]]
With their father's passing, Bobby and the others hope to
follow tradition and keep the bakery open, Sen. Cohen said.
But Bangor, he said, has tasted the last of Ruby Cohen's
rye bread.
``That was something that went with him.''
____
Ruby Cohen
For the high and mighty, the most dangerous man in Bangor
was the baker at the wheel of the station wagon.
Making morning rounds with rolls and rye loaves, Ruby Cohen
could cut to the core on issues and people, and often did.
His insight, like his skill at the oven, was sharpened by
constant use.
There is a fearlessness, a strength, a virtue that comes
from devoting 18 hours a day, six days a week to labor. It's
a license to speak your mind, with candor. It's courage that
comes from character.
Cohen's outspokenness shocked the eavesdropper at the
corner market. The man from the station wagon, arms wrapped
around bags of bulkie rolls, would walk in at mid-
conservation and unload on the counter and on a program or
politician. Those close to him respected his power, and were
in awe of it. One of his sons, Sen. William Cohen, a man not
easily flustered or impressed, was visibly on guard in the
presence of his father. Playing straight man to Ruby was a
lifelong learning experience that involved some pain.
Beneath the crust, Cohen was a man of wit and profound work
ethic. His weakness as a role model for finding purpose and
dignity in labor is that in its pursuit he set an impossible
pace. Few of his own generation could keep up. To his last
day on the job he loved, he was an exemplar of the American
dream.
Seventy years a baker, 58 years a husband and father of
three, Cohen was the epitome of the individual who became
a local institution. He could humble the powerful, charm
the casual acquaintance and feed the hungry with the
world's most perfect loaf of rye bread.
He helped give his city its character. He is missed.
____
Ruby's Friends Offer Farewell
funeral recalls a bangor legend
(By John Ripley)
Bangor.--Bangor bid a bittersweet farewell Thursday to the
wryest Reuben in town.
Reuben Cohen, known to presidents and plebes alike as
``Ruby,'' died Monday night at the place he loved most, the
small Bangor Rye Bread Co. bakery he had owned since 1929. He
was 86.
``In the Jewish view, if this was his time, God allowed
death to be a soft kiss rather than a prolonged suffering,''
Rabbi Joseph Schonberger said during Cohen's funeral Thursday
afternoon.
Outside Bangor, Cohen was known best as the father of U.S.
Sen. William S. Cohen. But within this small community,
particularly within the dwindling company of his own
generation, Cohen was cherished for his well-honed wit and
his iron constitution.
On an Indian summer day, the Beth Israel Synagogue was
filled with Ruby's people--Jews, gentiles, blacks, whites,
the young, the old, the famous and the anonymous.
And with so many funerals for colorful people, those who
attended Cohen's service came to weep, but left laughing,
grateful to have shared a slice of such an encompassing life.
Outwardly, Cohen was a simple baker who loved dancing and
the saxophone, his work and his family. But as Sen. Cohen
pointed out, his father also was one to dismantle barriers.
He broke with his faith to marry his Irish sweetheart, Clara,
and he was well informed on the issues of the day.
The essence of Cohen, Schonberger said, was the essence of
friendship itself; breaking bread together is older than the
ages.
His work ethic was legendary--18 hours a day, six days a
week, for nearly 70 years. When his son and fellow baker,
Bobby, finally decided to take a vacation after 30 years at
Bangor Rye, Cohen asked, ``What's he going to do with a week
off?'' Sen. Cohen recalled.
But as the world about him whizzed by, Ruby Cohen kept true
to his core; he was, Sen Cohen said, a man who knew no envy.
``He was an innocent in a world grown selfish and
cynical,'' Sen. Cohen said in a eulogy marked by moving
poetry and knee-slapping Rubyisms.
At times, Sen. Cohen pointed out, his father sometimes
showed a knack for being a little too innocent.
If a person expressed pride for losing 20 pounds, Cohen
thought nothing of suggesting a trim of 10 or 15 more. He
once loudly complained that Boston Celtics games were fixed,
even as coach Red Auerbach sat nearby, redder than ever.
And though an honest man, Cohen ``cheated the law in the
little ways,'' Sen. Cohen said.
He would envelop his eldest son in a large wool overcoat
and sneak him into basketball games at the old Bangor
Auditorium. Or, he might simply mingle with the out-going
crowd and walk in backward.
If one of Bangor's finest stopped him for erratic driving--
an occurence about as common as sunrises--Cohen would admit
to having two drinks. After the cop had set up a sobriety
test, Cohen would come clean: ``I had two, two cups of
coffee.''
``I loved him for his daring, and his wanting me to be with
him,'' said Sen. Cohen.
His father's irreverence often was best expressed in his
relished role as devil's advocate: alimony was ``all-the-
money''; Jesus knew where the rocks were when he walked on
water; and Moses probably waited for a drought before
crossing the Red Sea.
Through it all, Sen. Cohen said, his father dedicated his
life to two loves: his family and his work. When the cost of
flour and yeast rose over the years, the increases rarely
were reflected in the prices of Cohen's products.
``His concern was always for the welfare of his
customers,'' Sen. Cohen said, suggesting that some of the
customers could afford a price increase or two. ``And I would
say, `Sonny Miller is doing OK. Bill Zoidas is doing fine.
Doug Brown, don't cry for him.' ''
The future of some of these products, known to at least
three generations of Bangor residents, was buried with Cohen
on Thursday afternoon.
Since Cohen's death Monday night, Rabbi Schonberger joked,
the oft-heard question has been, ``Did he make the sourdough
for the rye bread before he died?''
____________________