✂️ Cutting Out Mom and Dad ... But Why❓❓❓

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Yesterday afternoon my wife and I met up with some friends at an awesome pizzeria in Lambertville NJ, called Liberty Hall Pizza. It serves up authentic Neapolitan-style wood-fired pizza that is some of the best pizza I've ever had!

At the end of the meal, I noticed that there wasn't a single piece of pizza crust left on anyone's plate, it was that good!

Rewinding a little ...

We got to Lambertville at about 3:30 PM which was an hour and a half early for our dinner meet up. Camera in hand, we walked about a block to the nearby Delaware and Raritan Canal, slipped under a post-n-rail fence, and took a walk on the tow-path that follows along the canal.

I took about 150 pictures on that walk, mostly of a really cool defunct train trestle that crosses the canal, a series of shots showing the chewing work of some of the beavers that live in the canal, and and old abandoned and heavily graffiti-covered railroad car that had long been deserted on its decommissioned tracks, and left to rust into the future.

These topics will be featured in some of my upcoming Steemit posts ... stay tuned.

And now to the topic in this post's title ...

While I was busy snapping photos, my wife noticed this simple, wood-slatted bench that had a memorial plaque affixed to it. It was a bronze-colored metal plaque with embossed lettering. The person being remembered was Leslie Holzman.

The bizarre part was that someone had gone to the trouble of literally cutting out the words Mom and Dad from the plaque. At least, to me, it appears that the words cut out were Mom and Dad. I suppose it could be otherwise but, nonetheless, I felt compelled to learn something about Leslie Holzman.

The plaque originally read:

In Loving Memory of
  Leslie Holzman
She Loved This Place
  Mom and Dad

So why would someone do this? I must admit that I found it a little disturbing!

Here are a few of my speculations:

• Someone was just being a jerk and wanted to desecrate the plaque.
• Someone just had to have the words Mom and Dad as little cutouts for some project of their own or out of pure selfishness.
• Some kind of family fallout that would have caused Leslie's Mother and/or Father to want to erase their association with the memorial. Unlikely.
• I'm sure you could dream up other possibilities, and the truth may likely never be known!

At this point, you may be asking yourself: who was Leslie Holzman?

Here's what I know:

• Leslie J. Holzman was born on November 8, 1952. She died on March 21, 2005 at 52 years old.

I was also able to find the following bio of Leslie J. Holzman, from Jade Dressler’s February 8th, 2011 blog entry on a website called The Jade Dress:

Leslie Holzman was one of the first women bike messengers in New York City, a top clothing designer, a fierce Vegan, a roommate of Debbie Harry, my best friend and one very magical person. When we met, she lived in a huge house on the Delaware River with 20 dogs, 15 white geese, mind-boggling and beautiful collections of rare medals, art books, antiques, jewels, boxes, notes and husband Benji, a feisty Sean Penn look-alike, Jewish auto mechanic from Las Vegas who specialized in Mercedes and hilarious fake porn phone messages. Like a child to ward off the finality of death, he kept the ashes of all the dogs from all his life in a huge field, a kind of Mercedes/Dead Dog Homage Museum, with black tank 1950’s specimens to slick white Gere era, Gigolo styles in all stages of sculptural decline or post-modern assemblage. (just the cars, the dogs were thankfully all in ash state.) Leslie would drive her Mercedes of the day at only 5-10 miles per hour, even on the highway for fear of hitting an animal or insect. She was an outspoken peaceful warrior for animals and the sacredness of all life with an infectious, dirty joke kind of laugh that literally lit up a room. Although caring and sensitive, she proudly proclaimed that she never cried. Never. I sat with her the day before she died, as she cried, letting go peacefully and finally.

So it appears that Leslie Holzman led quite an interesting life. May she rest in peace 🙏🏽 ✌🏼

Leslie J. Holzman: Source

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All images (except the first and last) @cognoscere (Canon PowerShot SD1400 IS)