Abe and Sonnie Suckno — celebrating with names and numbers
July 31, 2008
What’s in a name? Fifty years of marriage, apparently. For Green Brook residents Sonnie and Abe Suckno, Abe’s last name had been the make-or-break factor for the prospective couple.
Back in 1958, the year Sonnie and Abe first met, Abe, then 26 and a Westfield resident, had been given Sonnie’s phone number by a friend; but Sonnie, 19, was hardly interested. After going through school with a last name like Lipschitz, she was in no mood to acquire a surname like Suckno.
“For years I would say to my father, ‘Can’t I change my name?’ and he would say, ‘Don’t worry, when you get married, you’ll change your name,’” Sonnie said. “So when Abe called me I didn’t want to go out with him — just because of his name.”
In the end, Abe persuaded her to give him a shot. When he went to visit her at her apartment in Newark, for him at least, it was love at first sight.
“I didn’t even say hello to her yet,” Abe said. “I just saw the way she looked at the top of the stairs.” Of course, he added, “she didn’t feel the same way looking down on me — with the name of Suckno.”
They decided to have their first date at a remote restaurant where nobody would recognize them — in case it didn’t work out. Despite such pessimism, the relationship progressed pretty quickly: They went on dates the next few Saturdays, then during the week, then with their parents, until finally — a mere month after they first met — Abe proposed.
“I’m the type of person that doesn’t waste time,” Abe said. “I just made up mind that, okay, this is it, I feel comfortable with it. I went out, bought a ring, went upstairs in her home, and called her into the bedroom — very, very uneventful — and asked, ‘Would you like to see the ring I brought you?’”
Luckily for him, by then Sonnie’s feelings had overcome her repugnance toward Abe’s name. “To see this beautiful stone in blue velvet, what do you say at this point?” she joked. She added more seriously, “My parents adored him, I loved him, and — What I can I say? — we just felt we were ready for this.” A little over three months later, the couple married.
Lucky numbers
In the Jewish tradition, 18 is a lucky number; for the Sucknos 23 (or any combination of two and three) is a close runner-up.
“We met on March 23,” Sonnie said. “We became engaged on April 23; we were married on Aug. 3; our son was born on July 23; his pidyon haben was Aug. 23, which was my parents’ 23rd wedding anniversary — so it’s been going that way ever since.
“Then our daughter was born Oct. 6, so we said, ‘Ah, that’s the end of it,’ but it’s not because two times three is six.”
Even the sum of the digits of the year they met, 1958, is 23. The fact that they have two children and three grandchildren they regard as no mere coincidence, either.
Abe served as president of his father’s company, Stair Pak in Union, for 48 years before leaving it to a different ownership in Pennsylvania. He was also a member of Mountainside’s planning board council and board of education and served as council president for a few years.
Sonnie, who is a real estate broker, established Sonnie Suckno Realty in Dunellen. She also served as president of the Parent Teacher Association in Mountainside.
Both have been involved in the Jewish community. Abe has been active with the Jewish Federation of Central New Jersey and serves on the board of the Jewish Family Service of Central New Jersey, which will honor him in December for his years of commitment.
A lifetime member of Hadassah, Sonnie was a member of the sisterhood at Temple Emanu-El in Westfield and helps run a Friday night Shabbat service at a nursing home in Scotch Plains.
The couple attends the Chabad Jewish Center at Basking Ridge.
To celebrate their 50th anniversary, the Sucknos plan to take their immediate family and a few close friends on a dinner cruise circling Manhattan. Maybe two or three times around the island?
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