Karen de BERGH

Karen de Bergh Robinson

Karen's 2011 Autobiography

What have I been doing in the last fifty years? What, are you kidding? You want the play-by-play, or do you want the highlights? I know, just the highlights, you’re just like my husband, don’t bother him with the details.

Well, to make a long story short, I have spent the last fifty years raising him and my other two kids. The big difference is that they have left the house and my husband hasn’t. That’s really what happened after we graduated from Staples, he was still around so we decided to make a go of it, and we got married in 1965 after I graduated from Sarah Lawrence College having majored in Dance and Performing Arts. Chris (Staples class of ’62) and I spent the next five years or so in and out of work in the theatre, summer stock, musicals, teaching children’s dance, etc, living on the lower East Side of New York City, identifying with the movements of the time. I had my daughter, Cabeiri, in 1971 while we were living in a loft on the Bowery, where we started our piano restoration business at the end of that upheaval, that feast, that party we called the sixties.

Shortly thereafter we blew town for central Connecticut where I went to raise Cabeiri, start my own dance school, vegetable garden, sing with the Connecticut Opera Company, and give birth to my son Kylian in 1974.

We moved to South Windsor to expand Chris’ business - and I began to work with Chris in the restoration of high-grade grand pianos. I would like to report that I became manager of a financial empire, but I suppose it would be more accurate to say that I really managed to be the financial umpire. I became a technician – specializing in damper systems of grand pianos – even teaching at technical seminars along with Chris who had been in demand as a dynamic instructor for years. But I also became all too familiar with payroll and quarterly tax returns. Amazing how much paperwork can be generated by a company of five in this paperless society.

My son, Kylian, who graduated from Swarthmore in spite of himself, eventually ended up in Taos, NM where he lives with his partner and two children, Wren (4 years) and Aya (3 months). As my husband has told me: “He’s another woman’s problem now, dear.” (Just kidding, we love them all!) He has done everything and anything (installation of solar panels, construction, apprenticing with a sculptor…..) and is now going back to school for the geological sciences as they relate to a water quality research project in which he is involved in New Mexico.

My daughter, Cabeiri, graduated from Columbia and earned her PhD in anthropology (that’s DOCTOR Robinson to you, dad) at Cornell and is currently writing a book based on the time she spent in Pakistan studying the Kashmir situation and it’s refugees. She is an associate professor at the Univ. of Washington teaching political Islam at the Jackson School of International Studies.

Life has been good to us, although we have suffered the losses of our entire elder generation in the last few years. Life is precarious up here at the top of the generational heap! In 2000 we moved to Burlington, Connecticut with plenty of woods and plenty of quiet. Chris and I are now retired from the piano trade, but find ourselves as busy as ever. We are both active in Hartford Monthly Meeting of Friends and related activities. I am singing again – have a wonderful voice teacher who I wish I had found years ago. She is also a Sarah Lawrence graduate and starts every lesson with a joke that can only be described as ribald. Frankly, it is a very relaxing way to begin vocalizing… I am also currently involved with a local women’s chorale – a non professional group but quite serious and full of nice people. Then there are the trips to Seattle and Taos to visit our children.

I have also been doing research on my biological father who was interred in a concentration camp during the Second World War for his activities with the Dutch Underground. Due to the opening of WW2 archives in Germany, it has been possible to discover where he was sent after he was transported out of Holland, and where he perished. We plan to make a trip to Neuengamme in memoriam in the near future.

And Chris and I are still here – married now for 46 years and knowing each other for 5 years prior, we cherish our history together and the closeness we have achieved with each other.

Karen’s Update (2021)

My husband (Chris) and I did get to Neuengamme in May of 2103, the death camp where my father was imprisoned. Neuengamme was not an extermination camp, but by virtue of hard labor, little food and terrible living conditions most prisoners did not live more than 3 months. The archivist at Neuengamme was very generous with his time, sharing for almost two hours his knowledge of the camp.

We also traveled to Neustadt on the Bay of Leubeck where in April of 1944 the Neuengamme prisoners were placed on three ships which were subsequently bombed by the RAF on May 3^rd - only two days before the war ended in northern Germany. We were there for the annual memorial, which was very moving.

Five years ago, I joined the Musical Club of Hartford as a performing member and also made a CD (intended for family and close friends). The latter was something my son and my husband had asked me to do. I have mixed feelings about the result but gained quite an education in what goes into producing a CD! I continued singing until about a year ago, when ongoing acid reflux compromised my vocal cords.

My daughter, Cabeiri is now a tenured associate professor at the Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington teaching political Islam, political violence and armed conflict, and refugee studies among other topics. My son, Kylian, is a hydrologist working out of Albuquerque, NM. He researches ground quality for feasibility and compliance, supervises drilling of wells (most recently at an Indian reservation in Arizona which has received grants from the federal government) - and other projects and responsibilities.

Chris and I now have 4 granddaughters, 14, 10, 5 1/2 and almost 3. What a gift! Since they live far away, we are fortunate to have a family home on Lake George which draws them all East each summer – except for 2020 due to COVID-19!

In 2008 Chris sold his piano restoration business and we both retired from the piano trade. Subsequently I joined my husband in attending the Religious Society of Friends (Quaker) Meeting in West Hartford, CT. I became a member several years later and have become very involved there. Ours is a ‘silent’ meeting, which means that we have no minister or organizing staff. Worship is silent unless someone rises to give a message. Last May I ended my two year as term Clerk of the Meeting, which means that you are the titular head of the Meeting, oversee all aspects of the life of the Meeting and even sign legal documents.

One concern that arose while I was Clerk and is currently an ongoing issue with which I am very involved, is the release from prison of a former attender who was convicted of inappropriate solicitation of an underage girl over the internet. His desire to return to the Meeting has created many different responses (including triggers of past traumas) and it will likely be a long process before discernment is reached on the issue.

And then there is COVID-19 – a year of caution, isolation and Zoom…... Chris and I are in our 56^th year of marriage and we are so incredibly grateful that we have each other and actually still like to spend time together – especially now! We still live in our home in Burlington CT where I love to work in the outdoors.

Stay well, Friends!