Photo Album 2 – Arnold & Sue Heller: Our Son Sasha Bart Heller is Born April 19, 1978.
I always imagine Sasha, eight days old here, looking up at his mother and thinking; “Wow, did I ever luck out! I have a really pretty and cool looking Mom.” And Sash did for she loved and adored him and helped him develop giftedness in three areas; language, music, and athletics.
Age three months in both pictures.
My mother Jeanne Heller Polinsky and her husband Ruben Polinsky of Clark, NJ, visited about six months after Sash was born – the four of us are pictured in my back yard. It was fashionable in Atlanta in the late seventies and early eighties for young professionals to wear overalls – they were very comfortable.
Age fifteen months – taken in Houston visiting the Texas Auerbachs.
Sash, age three with me – I am 36 here.
Sash, age six, with his beautiful mother at the beach.
Sash has always been close with his older cousin Craig Polinsky who is a medical doctor today. Craig once called up all of his friends and urged them; “Hey, you have to come over to meet my cousin Sasha from Atlanta – he’s six years old and a genius.” Craig, busy doing homework, became amazed by how many words of his weekly vocabulary list Sash already knew.
Herman Auerbach, Sasha’s grandfather, at age 12 months, put a yellow plastic bat in his grandson’s hands, pitched a plastic yellow whiffle ball to Sash, and took a line drive off of his forehead and fell down. I put a sawed down broom stick in my son’s hands at twenty-two months and he was quickly blasting blue racket balls all over our big back yard. Actually, he was an even better pitcher than hitter and usually played at shortstop, second base, or center field.
The Heller and Zandman (Howie and Ronnie) families camped out for four days every year for seven straight summers. Sash, age nine here, is pictured with Melissa age seven and Adam five. FDR State Park adjacent to Calloway Gardens was one of our favorites.
Sash is employed by Gatehouse Media in Austin, Texas and is Team Leader of the Sports Desk that puts together the sports pages of ninety-eight daily newspapers. Melissa is a public relations executive in Boston and Adam is Marketing Director for the Denver Jewish Community Center.
Jamaica has been a popular destination of the Heller family – Sash, age thirteen here, is pictured with me during some early morning fishing off shore from Silver Sands, a sub-development by the beach about halfway between Montego Bay and Ocho Rios on the north coast road.
Sasha passed me in height at age sixteen and also beat me at basketball for the first time that year. He was a fine point guard who saw the whole court and could hit the three.
Sasha, age seventeen, with Sue and I in our backyard two years before the great Dunwoody tornado of 1998.
www.arnoldheller.org/social-studies/105-geography-1998-dunwoody-tornado-reconstruction.html. Documentation of property restoration through 2006.
Please go on to Photo Album 3 – Arnold & Sue Heller: Special People We’ve Known or Met.