Dr. Kelli Cohen Fein, grew-up in a Houston home built by her late grandfather Herman Cohen. Her love of music was nurtured by her mother who played the piano. “I learned music before I spoke English,” Kelli tells me. “My happiest times with my parents were going to Jones Hall and hearing The Houston Symphony. I was a Jr. Patron.” And, it would seem a bit of a groupie for classical musicians. “I met them all, Arthur Rubenstein, Vladimir Horowitz. I even painted a picture for Andre Previn and presented it to him after a concert.” The picture was of a little girl playing the piano.

Kelli lost her beloved piano teacher Jean Viney to Breast Cancer. Kelli witnessed the suffering her young teacher endured and vowed at the tender age of 12 to try to help the sick. This was the initial impetus that led her to a medical career. The path was indirect. Before Medical School, Kelli studied Philosophy and French at Sweet Briar College and the University of Texas. She participated in the DeBakey Summer Surgery Program after her first year of college. She later earned a Master’s in French Literature while working as an au pair in Paris.

Dr. Cohen Fein has been practicing Pediatric and General Diagnostic Radiology for almost 17 years. She has been Assistant Professor at Baylor College of Medicine, Chief of Musculoskeletal Radiology at Ben Taub Hospital and Chief of Radiology at the Institute for Rehabilitation and Research. Kelli was recently awarded a Doctoral degree in Education at the University of Houston where she completed a dissertation on the physician-patient relationship.

Kelli’s medical career was all encompassing. After being on call 36-hours during the winter of 1998, an exhausted Kelli fell into bed. Moments later she bolted upright, remembering a holiday party she’d promised to attend. “All my friends and their children were there.” Dear friends, Lois and George Stark, asked which of the children belonged to her. Kelli’s answer was, “I have yet to meet the man of my dreams.” George got a twinkle in his eye and “talked me into one last blind date with a gentleman he promised, ‘has a good heart.’ Two weeks later Marty called.”

“We talked for 45 minutes that night and our first date was a 4-hour dinner,” Marty interjects. They just celebrated their 10th wedding anniversary. They are blessed with two young children and share a beautiful blended family with Martin’s older children. Both Kelli and Marty are constantly mindful that life is a precious miracle, especially since both his parents are Holocaust survivors. Marty is the Founding Chair of the Houston Holocaust Museum. He and Kelli are continuing supporters. Kelli was on the steering committee for Dr. Sheldon Rubenfeld’s 6-month conference featuring speakers on Medical Ethics and the Holocaust at the Holocaust Museum Houston and Kelli and Marty co-chaired the 2009 HMH Dinner.

Marty’s parents were both from Warsaw, Poland. His father survived four concentration camps. The day Dachau was liberated, April 29, 1945, he was found unconscious, weighing just 80 pounds. Martin’s mother was spared the camps and the Warsaw Ghetto. With the help of her sister and a cousin she managed to get papers identifying her as an orphaned Christian. She survived working at a restaurant operated by a pro Nazi family in Wittlich, Germany. When the fighting was over she went to the displaced person’s office in near-by Munich. As she began to ask about her family the tears began to fill her eyes. She asked the young clerk if he had a tissue. He replied, “I’ll give you a tissue and the key to my heart.” They were married a short time later. When Marty was two years old, they arrived in the United States and settled in Louisville, Kentucky.

“My parents really represent the American Dream,” Marty says. “They arrived with no money, not speaking English. Dad worked two jobs and went to English class at night. They had no social life – saved every penny and managed to open a clothing store.” His dad began building apartments and homes and Marty painted and cleaned all through high school. Marty’s friends taught him about America. Many are still his friends today.

Where Joann Crassas wanders, laughter is sure to follow. Joann sees the humorous side of everything and her humor is never bitter or unkind. Instead of making fun of others, she usually makes fun of herself and her life, which she says is, “the real life version of My Big Fat Greek Wedding.”

Born Joann Yianitsas in Beaumont, she is the daughter of Greek immigrants who fluently spoke three languages and could get by in several others.

Her mother sat with Joann for years as the child practiced piano and encouraged her only daughter to excel in music and education.

“[I was] an ugly, awkward child who had to develop a sense of humor and a personality because I wasn’t going to make it in the looks category.” It wasn’t long before a swan emerged from that ugly duckling. At Lamar University, she was elected a campus beauty.

Joann had two brothers both of whom died in their 40s, one of cancer, the other of heart disease. “I’ve seen the devastation that disease causes for families,” she says. “My mother suffered terribly over the loss of her sons, and, my father died relatively young and suddenly.”

The Determined Suitor
Bill Crassas, a New York businessman of Greek heritage, had heard for years about the beautiful Greek belle from Beaumont who could sing, play the piano, and had a master’s degree in education.

“He tells me, ‘I never dreamed it would all be true,’” she says.

On a trip to New York, a business associate of her father invited Joann and her mother to dinner and introduced them to Bill Crassas.

“He made me laugh,” she remembers. “But, I wasn’t interested. He wasn’t my type.”

However, there are two sides to every story. “I was just planning on having a drink and getting out of there,” he says. “I was surprised. Here sat the most beautiful woman I had ever seen and she was funny and intelligent as well. I knew instantly she was the woman I’d marry.”

However, convincing Joann would take some work, especially after the summer of 1961 when she went to Europe.

“That summer was like something out of the movies. I went to Europe with my mother. The Greek community is really tribal,” Joann says. “Everyone knows everyone else. We were guests of Aristotle Onasis in Athens, Maria Callas was on the yacht, and there was a Greek pop singer.”

Three months later, when Joann and her mother returned from Greece, Bill was waiting for them as they got off their plane in New York.

He kept up with her European adventure through a friend who was a CIA agent. Bill had been with the foreign service in Greece in 1954-55 and maintained contacts, who informed him when Joann returned to the States.

Later on, Bill’s father asked Joann in front of Bill and other members of his family, “When are you going to marry my son?” Joann says, “I nearly fell out of my chair. In an off-the-cuff reply I said, ‘Oh, someday,’ and laughed. Well it was no joke to the Crassas family. They all began hugging me and congratulating Bill and bam! We were engaged.”

Bill moved to Houston and opened a branch of the family ship supply business. He burned the freeways traveling back and forth to Beaumont courting Joann while she had doubts about actually getting married.

“For me, marriage was a lifetime commitment and I did not want to get it wrong. I went to church and prayed,” she says. “It was like a cloud lifted, and I knew it was the right thing to do. Until that moment I was headed back to Europe in my mind, back to the jet-set life.”

Still smiling, still helping
Forty-five years, two children and three grandchildren later, Joann remains sure it was the right thing to do. “Bill is still the most entertaining man I’ve ever met. He loves me and he tells me that every day. We laugh all the time and cherish every day we have together. Laughter and God have gotten me through everything,” she explains.

As they smile together, both Joann and Bill have also battled side-by-side together against cancer. Both are now cancer free and sing the praises of M.D. Anderson Cancer Center.

Joann is an incredibly energetic person who has worn many hats over the years. She was a schoolteacher for three years. She was co-producer for the “Texas Today” TV show on Channel 51 for its tenure and spent eight years on Hunter’s Creek City Council. She now works with Personette &Associates as a realtor.

In the world of charity and volunteerism, Joann has worked tirelessly. “I do it for the camaraderie and the cause,” she says.

In January, she was honored as an ABC Channel 13 2007 Woman of Distinction for her volunteerism.

Much of Joann’s volunteer work revolves around medicine and science as she devotes time and energy to Baylor College of Medicine, The University of Houston, Moores School of Music, Houston Ballet, Houston Symphony and Ronald McDonald House.

On Nov. 8 at Reliant Center, Joann Crassas, Karan Robinson and Shawn Stephens will co-chair the Saks Fifth Avenue Fashion Show and Luncheon benefiting the Ballet Guild’s Nutcracker Market. For tickets call 713-535-3231.

Also for the Christmas season, Joann is again chairing The Angel Tree program for the Salvation Army. For more information, call the Salvation Army at 713-752-0677. This program provides gifts to needy children and seniors. Angel Trees are located in participating shopping malls as well as businesses and organizations. From the trees, donors select Angel tags, which list the individual’s first name, age, clothing and shoe size, as well as one need and one wish. The donor purchases the Angel’s presents and the Salvation Army ensures they arrive at the Angel’s door. Little will they realize a laughing angel has helped them.

A generous spirit makes a happy home in Houston

The voice is so pure and the scene so memorable that it spawns three generations of opera lovers. Picture a young boy, about five years old, playing in the streets of New York City in 1920. It is evening. Suddenly, Metropolitan Opera star Enrico Caruso gives an impromptu performance from the back of a carriage. It is so spellbinding that the young boy is mesmerized and becomes a lifelong opera fan. That young boy, Tommy Coohill, is the father of Houston opera lover Eileen Hricik.

“My father loved opera, though he never got to see one.” Tommy just didn’t have time, with trying to earn a living and raise two young daughters. Then, at age 49, time ran out. Tommy died of a cerebral hemorrhage. Eileen reveals that it happened, “two months before my wedding — quite an awful shock for all of us.”

Besides her father’s love of singing, records and the retelling of how fabulous Caruso was that long-ago evening, there is another event that solidified Eileen’s love for opera. “Another vivid-beyond-belief memory is of sitting at one of my cousin’s houses on a Sunday night, watching ‘The Ed Sullivan Show,’” she says. “Ed introduced a singer who had just had a major triumph at The Met. As she sang, I had chills and remember thinking that the human voice couldn’t possibly make the beautiful sounds she was making. She was, of course, Joan Sutherland, singing the mad scene from ‘Lucia.’”

Benvenuto, Anthony!
Fast forward to the mid 1980s, and the story gets better. She is asked by the Houston Grand Opera to be Joan Sutherland’s host. “My husband followed me to the airport when I went to meet her plane, as he thought I might faint,” she says. “Joan and her husband, Ricky Bonynge, are now treasured friends.”

Eileen, a Houston Grand Opera board member since 1986, and her husband, George, will chair the Oct. 21 Opening Night Gala. The theme is “Benvenuto, Anthony!” It is designed as a welcome for HGO’s new executive director, Anthony Freud. Eileen is enthusiastic about the opera company’s future under Freud.

“He has a vision that is fascinating, a resume that is overwhelming, a connection with everyone in the world of opera and an excitement about being here in Houston that I find delightful and infectious,” she says.

Eileen is adding a new feature to the Opening Night Gala, a reduced ticket price for members of HGO’s Young Professional Group (age 40 and younger). Eileen knows that generation well, as her three opera-loving sons are all in their 30s.

A woman of distinction
Eileen understands Anthony Freud’s excitement about becoming a Houstonian. She and George moved here in 1966. Her love of Houston was, admittedly, not instant. “I was terribly lonely,” she remembers. “George worked incredibly long hours.”

But, Eileen was not foreign to being the new kid on the block. She attended seven different elementary schools, as her parents jostled back and forth, living in New York City, where her father worked, and in the ‘burbs of New Jersey, as her mother, Rita, wanted. Finally, the suburbs won.

Putting her degree in education from Montclair State College in Montclair, N.J., to work, she taught at Houston’s Sherman Elementary. The job was instrumental in helping her get over the “moving blues,” and her career changed from teacher to mom as Eileen and George welcomed three sons in fairly rapid succession.

“I was always very involved volunteering in their schools — I chaired the St. John’s Book Fair when my oldest was in the fourth grade and have just gone on to organize lots of events since then,” she says.

So many, in fact, that in 1996 Eileen’s volunteering was honored when she was named “A Woman of Distinction” at the 1996 Winter Ball, a major fundraiser for the Crohns and Colitis Foundation of America.

Baseball and history
Eileen has two more passions — baseball and historic preservation.

When she was 10 years old and living in Brooklyn, the Dodgers won the World Series — and she witnessed the celebration first-hand. “It was very exciting, very joyous,” Eileen says. “I so wish that my father could see Minute Maid Park and know that we are very involved with the Astros.”

Her love of historic preservation comes from her maternal grandfather. “My grandfather was a ‘pied piper,’” she says. During summers in the Berkshires, he would gather as many of his 27 grandchildren as were around and take them on a walk.

“We all followed at his heels because he was so much fun,” she recalls. “His stories about the history of New York were incredible — probably why I am so interested in historic preservation to this day.” Eileen currently serves as president of the Greater Houston Preservation Alliance.

Becoming a Houstonian
Eileen realized she wanted to make Houston her permanent home seven years after they had moved here. In 1973, she and George had to make the decision to stay or return to New York. Thankfully, they decided to stay.

“I thought then, and still do today, that Houston is probably the most welcoming city in the world,” she says. “If you care about Houston, if you want to become involved, you are welcomed with open arms. People who visit here seem to enjoy Houston — but only people who move here realize this extraordinary warmth.”

Angels Among Us

by Fran Fawcett-Peterson

Catherine Lanigan has no fear  a trait exhibited by every heroine in each of her 26 romance novels. Perhaps an unfailing faith in the face of all circumstance marks the essence of the romance novel. It’s certainly the essence of this author’s books. Books that have been translated into 23 languages and produced fans the world over.

With the world at her fingertips, Lanigan chose Houston as her home, first arriving in the 1970s. “Houston has become my home. I just dug in and sank my roots,” she says. All the same, it took a little while for Lanigan to realize just how deeply her roots reached. The writer returned to her native Indiana for a few years to help take care of her ailing mother, and that’s when she discovered that, as much as she appreciated her home in suburban Chicago, she had fallen in love with Houston. “I mean, I missed the dirt,” she says. “My heart is here.” So, with her belongings packed in a U-haul truck, she set out for the Lone Star State, stopping only briefly at the state line to kiss the Texas earth.

Always a storyteller, Lanigan was the eldest of four children. She routinely made up stories to entertain her siblings because her mother was ill, and young Lanigan wanted to keep the household quiet. Her father didn’t believe in the so-called “idiot box,” so there was no television in the household, leaving the children instead with books and their imaginations. For years, Lanigan dreamed of becoming a writer.

Sometimes dreams are snagged in the nets of everyday life. For the true believer, however, they remain only temporarily tangled. Lanigan’s dream was “snagged” during her freshman year of college. She was enrolled in a creative writing class taught by a visiting professor from Harvard, a class typically reserved for upper classmen. After the first writing assignment, the professor called her into his office and threw her story across the desk at her. It landed unceremoniously in her lap. She was stunned to hear him say she had no talent and would never be a writer. She was crushed, and worse than that, she believed him.

Lanigan didn’t write again for 14 years. During that time, she married, had a son and became a businesswoman, owning a swimming pool company in Houston among other ventures. Then, in 1979, she met a journalist, Hugh Ainsworth, beside a swimming pool at a hotel in San Antonio as she played with her son.

“I always wanted to be a writer,” she told Ainsworth.

“If you wanted to write you’d be writing,”  he laughed.

“Oh, no, I have it on good authority I have absolutely no talent,” Lanigan said and proceeded to tell him about the professor and the abrupt termination of her dream. His answer to that would change the course of her life.

“I’m ashamed of you,” he said. “You haven’t even tried.”

The statement hit a nerve in the soon-to-be novelist. Lanigan’s mother had always said that, and Ainsworth’s words echoed in a part of Lanigan’s soul that would not stand still for it. The journalist gave her his card and told her he would read anything she produced. Lanigan did indeed write, and, true to his word, Ainsworth read it and even recommended her first story, a World War I historical novel, to his editor. Her very first effort, “Bound by Love,” was a success.

Other successes followed. “The Promise,” set in Houston in the late 1800s, features a gutsy heroine who makes it on her own in the rough and tough world of the day, up to and including the devastating turn-of-the-century Galveston storm. “The Legend Makers,” set in the steamy jungles of the Amazon, offers the tale of a Texas geologist on a mission that will change her life forever. And then, there’s “Wings of Destiny: An Epic Saga of Self-discovery.” “This is the story,” according to the book jacket, “of every human being’s struggle to embrace the haunting secrets of their heritage and utilize them as catalysts to unearth the fortunes of their own soul.”

Notably, Lanigan’s most recent works are factually based. “The Evolving Woman’s subtitled, “Intimate Confessions of Surviving Mr. Wrong.”

“With this novel,” states Romantic Times, “Lanigan introduced “The Evolving Woman” heroine who, given a set of circumstances, makes choices that enrich who she is as well as the world around her.”

Then came “Angel Watch,” subtitled “Goosebumps, Dreams, Signs and Divine Nudges.” In it, Lanigan reveals a great deal of herself, including the fact that she believes that an angel appeared to her father before he died and told him to tell her to write this book. It contains stories from her own life and the lives of others in an illustration of divine intervention.

Lanigan says she believes God has put her on Earth for a very specific reason and that her guardian angels are helping with her mission. “You know, Ayn Rand said that literature must have “an underlying moral thematic structure,” and I have always tried to have that. But now I?m taking it a step further and saying literature must have an underlying moral and spiritual thematic structure.”

Lanigan currently is busy with a series of books for young adults, several screenplays and, not to disappoint her romance fans, she says she’ll continue to create in that vein as well. Thanks to faith, Lanigan is watching her dreams come true and taking us along for the literary ride.

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