In appreciation: Sam Gorkofsky

I met Sam Gorkofsky about two years ago, when I began conducting interviews with descendants of the Russian Jewish families who had settled in the Ellsworth Hills above Sharon. Sam was 90 at the time, and he and his wife, Estelle, still lived on their farm straddling the Sharon-Amenia Road. He had married Estelle Gurfein in 1959 and brought her from Brooklyn to live on the farm where they raised their children, Terri and Kevin.

Sam was the last of his generation in a number of ways. As the youngest child of Louis Gorkofsky and Bertha (Paley) Gorkofsky, he was raised in Ellsworth among Yiddish-speaking immigrants in a house the Gorkofskys shared with the Weinsteins on Cornwall Bridge Road.

Sam learned English when he entered the one-room school a 5-minute walk from home on Cornwall Bridge Road. He was also among the first generation of students to be bussed to the “new” Housatonic Valley Regional High School, where he graduated from the agricultural program.

Having fallen in love with farming, Sam was among the last dairy farmers who would be able to support a family from a small family farm. Although Sam began with a few cows that he milked by hand, and he still remembered going out to find a buyer for his first canister of milk, with the help of milking machinery he increased his herd to 180 cattle. Yet, even with the help of several farm hands, milking cattle began at 4 in the morning and only ended with a final after-supper check of the barn at 8 p.m. to make sure the cattle were OK for the night. 

“I never went anywhere,” Sam liked to say, with satisfaction and pride at having lived exactly as he wanted.

Sam was an honest, forthright, opinionated man, and an astute judge of character. A good raconteur, he retained an immense and reliable store of memories about both the farms and farmers around Sharon and the kosher resorts that many of the Russian Jewish farmers had later built in Amenia. Estelle’s stroke more than 20 years earlier had finally got Sam to give up farming to give Estelle the 24-hour care she needed. Convinced that no one could care for her with his dedication, Sam was good-humored about the confinement of his days. 

Sam Gorkofsky died suddenly on Tuesday, July 18, as he was leaving to pick up his daughter, Terri Kravitz, at the Wassaic station. He was buried on Thursday, July 20, at King David Cemetery in Putnam Valley, N.Y. In attendance was his loving three-generation family, including his wife, Estelle, their son and daughter, Kevin and Terri, and their grandchildren, as well as nephews, nieces and friends. Soil from the farm he had lovingly tended for so many years was tossed over his coffin.

Carol Ascher

Sharon