He was the second oldest in a family of seven children born to Julius and Celia Cohen, who emigrated to the United States from Lithuania in the early 1900’s. After passing through Ellis Island, they were drawn to the opportunities of the then booming Biddeford. The family lived in several houses around a neighborhood known as Little Canada, which was close to the textile mills that employed so many at the time. Cohen learned both Hebrew and Yiddish (which friends say he used to prevent classmates from overhearing “secret” conversations while in school) from his parents.
