RIVKAH PELLER, ASH
Remembering Maggie Oakshot
by Sherry Rose-Bond
Starting about forty years ago and within a very short period of time, Charlotte Wisniewski became Rivkah Peller: a rabbi’s wife, one of my closest friends, an active Sherlockian, and Maggie Oakshott of ASH. Each new role she undertook became an adventure for Rivkah, which she entered with her full heart and soul. Her picture should be in the dictionary accompanying the definition for joie de vivre because that’s how she lived her life.
Included among her many adventures were meeting the Queen of Holland, establishing a nude scuba-diving club, making up tales for cruise ship passengers who were touring the museum attached to the synagogue in Curaçao where her husband was Chief Rabbi, and, during The Final Problem Tour, bribing a British police sergeant to call me to say that she had been arrested!
Rivkah discovered the existence of ASH, and together we attended our very first meeting. This was my first experience with Sherlockians outside of Philadelphia and the start of a forty-year immersion into the Sherlockian world. When I found out that John Bennett Shaw was planning a week-long workshop on Sherlock Holmes at Notre Dame University, we absolutely had to attend! We drove out and giggled together the entire time. When, miraculously, we won one of John’s killer quizzes, we stayed up the entire night creating even harder quiz questions!
Rivkah incorporated Holmes into her life and her activities, attending scion meetings whenever she could and, when she couldn’t, locating “orphan” Sherlockians or converting people into Sherlockians. These people became her firm friends thereafter. Holmes was a theme running through her life, whether she was living in Curaçao, Texas, Panama, the Poconos, or finally Mexico.
She was the best kind of best friend: one you could rely on unconditionally. Once when I had the flu, she showed up on my doorstep with chicken soup (from a Chinese restaurant) and rolls of toilet paper because, well, you know, the flu! When I started dating Scott, she insisted that we double-date so she could vet him. I assume that he passed muster because she flew up from Curaçao to attend our wedding.
When she died suddenly in Mexico on June 22, people all over the globe mourned because anyone who knew Rivkah recognized that she had been unique and a force of nature. Our Sherlockian world and, indeed, the outside world will be much less interesting places without her. Personally, I owe her three great debts: she introduced me to ASH and thus to the great society of Sherlockians; she nurtured my courtship with Scott; and she was my good and true friend. I shall miss her and never forget her!
