I apologize for the too-long gap in posting. As I've mentioned an earlier, Dad's been suffering from advanced dementia for a long time; a long, slow descent away from personhood made up of occasional plateaus separated by periods of decline. Late last year the decline accelerated, and dealing with the overall situation was just a bit more than I could write about... and, as is normal with dementia, the situation just kept getting worse.
We lost Dad a little after 6:00pm on Saturday, February 18th.
Dad was born on July 1930, in a cold water flat in Brooklyn. He was kind of an "oops," the youngest of 6 boys and a girl. One highlight of his early childhood was the time he wanted to see what made the family's radio work, so he took it apart and then reassembled it. Unfortunately, somewhere in that process it morphed into a permanently silent paperweight, something that he was apparently reminded of for decades afterwards.
Always wanting to help, Dad began shining shoes & selling papers when he was 9 or 10. He remembered an occasional shakedown for "spare change" from one of the beat cops but he also learned which theaters were the best to sell the late edition of papers in front of -- the ones where the big spenders would come out after the movie and pay him a nickel for a three-cent paper, then tell him to keep the change to impress their dates. He always took the money home and gave it to his mother. As he grew, he would sometimes run deliveries for the neighborhood butcher, a job that didn't pay well but had the fantastic advantage of a large walk-in icebox/cooler he could go into during the hot New York summers. He learned to drive in the summer of 1944 while working on a farm in upstate NY (it was a Ford-Ferguson tractor), sparking a lifetime love of getting behind the wheel to go see what was over the next hill. Sometime in late 1944/early 1945, he finally got his working papers and moved on to a job at an automat.
Dad graduated from high school (go Jefferson!) in 1948, and because he always had a feeling there was something more to the world than he could see in Brooklyn he joined the U.S. Navy in October of that year. He wanted to be a pilot, but during Basic at the USN's Great Lakes facility it was discovered that his eyesight didn't make the grade so he became a meteorologist instead.
As often happens in the military, Dad was kind of shuffled around a bit; he was aboard the USCGC Eastwind, then on the ground in San Diego (CA), then aboard the USS Valley Forge for combat operations off the coast of Korea, then on the ground in Pensacola (FL), then on the ground in Lakehurst (NJ), where he remembered seeing some of the wreckage of the Hindenburg still on the ground.
In November of 1950, one of Dad's brothers called to let him know their mother had died, and he was given a hardship transfer to Floyd Bennett Field just outside New York City. Attending a New Year's party, he met a young lady who was extremely impressed by him -- when one of his buddies passed out drunk, Dad (who barely drank at all) threw him over his shoulder, carried him down several flights of stairs, and drove him home before returning to the party. The party ran out of booze a while later, so Dad walked a couple of blocks to a bar, where the bartender decided to help out a guy in uniform and sold him a few bottles of booze extra-cheap so the hostess wouldn't be embarrassed. When a bunch of (mostly) still-sober partygoers wanted to see the first sunrise of the new year, it was Dad who piled everyone into his car for the drive to Rockaway beach -- dodging a wrong-way drunk driver on the way there, then stopping at a White Castle afterwards for a hamburger "breakfast." He and the young woman quickly became good friends and from that time on they frequently dated... other people. Every time they went out on a date, each of them was someone else's date in a group of couples.
Early in 1951, Dad was assigned to a helicopter training unit back down in Florida, and near the end of that year he was introduced to the second great love of his life: CVB-43, the USS Coral Sea. During two cruises aboard her, his adventures included meeting Pope Pius XII; playing softball at the site of the world's first olympics in Greece; and meeting the actor Louis Jourdan on the beach in Nice, France. During all this time he periodically sent letters home to family & friends, including that young lady he met during the new year's party.
In October of 1952, Dad was mustered out of the Navy and given a train ticket back home to New York. He took advantage of the GI Bill to earn his Master's degree at New York University, and during that time he would often visit that young lady whom he never actually dated... although it was frequently to pick up her kid brother and take him to see the planes at Floyd Bennett Field or other cool stuff.
In November of that year, there came a day when two of Dad's friends each told him a few hours apart that they intended to marry that young woman he was friends with. Annoyed that she would lead on both of his buddies, he invited her to go for a ride and diplomatically broached the subject with her -- leaving her extremely surprised, since neither of his buddies had informed her of their intent, nor had she expressed that level of interest in either of them. His response was along the lines of, "Well if you're not going to marry him, and you're not going to marry him either... would you marry me?" She replied in the affirmative after just a moment of thought, and that's how the Pipsqueak's grandparents offically became a couple for the first time ever. They were married April 11th, 1953.
Later that same year, Dad took an exam and won one of only 35 New York State internships, and began working for the State of New York's Finance Division. After moving to a new house in 1956, he had a chance to demonstrate his diehard dedication to family when Mom called him to tell him their new puppy was very sick -- and Dad marched into his new boss' office stating that his puppy was dying so he had to be released for the day right then and there. (Amazingly, not only did the puppy go on to live many years, Dad still had his job the next day.)
In March of 1959, Yours Truly came onto the scene. Dad was a both a little hyper over, and distracted by, my birth -- my uncle only found out about it when he came home to an empty house after school only find a note saying, "Don't worry, I took [Mom] to the hospital." Oh, and he bought a big package of pink birth announcements.
Dad graduated with honors from NYU that year, and he is given the honor of being flag-bearer at the graduation ceremony (Mom missed it all because she had to stay home with very sick lil' me.) Things were relatively quiet until mid-1964, when he was given orders at work to find a way to cut X dollars from the budget... or fire a whole bunch of people to save the money. He and a colleague not only saved all the jobs, they managed to do it with an even larger budget cut than had been requested, all without impacting daily operations or anyone's salary. They are thanked with a pink slip.
Unemployed with a young wife and a new baby, Dad considered rejoining the military and was actually granted a commission as a 2nd Lieutenant in the U.S. Army. Mom told him she did not want to be an army wife and that he had a major decision to make, and Dad once again put family ahead of his personal choices and turned down the commission. (Just a few years later, what would have been his unit repeatedly incurred extremely heavy losses in Vietnam, so we all think this decision was A Good Thing.)
Still looking for a job, Dad found an article mentioning someone he'd never met who had a very Jewish-sounding name being given a very high appointment in the U.S. Foreign Service, at the time one of the more notoriously anti-semitic branches of government. Dad wrote the guy a "mazel tov" letter that included something along the lines of, "Hey, by the way, here's a copy of my resume, do you think there might be something there for me?" Three weeks later, a big manila envelope appeared in the mail (Mom remembers saying, "Don't open that, it will change our lives") with all the paperwork needed to apply for a position as a U.S. Department of State (aka "State") Foreign Service Officer (FSO). Dad aced the exam, aced the interview, and was soon commuting weekly to Washington, DC for training.
Dad had yet another chance to show his devotion to family when he was given his first assignment to Indonesia within days of discovering I had a medical problem that the country's medical infrastructure could not deal with -- Mom, AJ and I would have to be medevaced via military plane to the Philippines every six months for what most people would consider a very basic exam. Of course, Dad did something that you just do NOT do: he marched into his boss' office, and speaking as a newly-minted and still-untried FSO told him, "I can't take this assignment because of family medical problems, you need to send me somewhere else."
Already flexing his muscles as a diplomat, Dad not only kept his job, but our first posting was to Chile -- where the medical care was more than good enough for our needs. I have to assume he was pretty good at his job, because he was supposed to be at the embassy there for four years... until his boss added a 5th year to his tour. There might've been a 6th year, but by then the political writing was on the wall for the country and we returned Stateside before things got too bad.
At the time, there was an unwritten rule at State: you don't remain Stateside for more than a year, maybe 18 months, between overseas postings. Dad watched Mom's career develop & grow, watched me moving through school, watched AJ moving through school, and decided the family's need to remain Stateside outweighed his need to move up the ladder at State so he repeatedly "lateraled" into different positions. In addition to giving hm some really interesting jobs, this allowed Mom to build a solid professional career of her own, allowed me to get all the way through college, and allowed AJ to get into high school without major upheaval.
Dad finally accepted a posting to USNATO in Brussels in 1981. Since the school year hadn't quite ended, he commuted back & forth across the Atlantic a few times until we could join him there. We all had slightly over two amazing years living in and traveling around Europe before finally (reluctantly) returning "home" to the U.S. Dad once again found himself a series of positions within State that he enjoyed, and while working full-time he also worked hard to finally earn his long-put-off PhD from Nova (now Nova Southeastern) University. The diploma that he hung proudly on the wall at home includes the middle initials "MBA" -- the first letter of each of his family's names to honor the support he insisted we had given him through the often-tough course of study.
Dad finally decided the (potentially) nomadic life offered by State wasn't what he really wanted any more, so he retired in late 1988... Only to feel a little bored, so by the end of 1989 he was a member of the teaching staff and Head of the Business Department at Trinity College (now Trinity University) in Washington, DC. Once again, he must have done a really good job, because one end-of-semester course evaluation turned in by a student consisted of the words "LEV IS GOD!" scrawled across the page in huge letters. (The framed evaluation form is still in the house.)
Things were quiet for a while (during which time Dad proudly sat on the stage as a member of Trinity's faculty as Mom was awarded her own long-delayed degree) and then -- seemingly very suddenly -- in 1993 he changed his mind and decided that a potentially nomadic life might not be such a bad thing after all and accepted a position in Den Haag in the Netherlands to help establish a new international organization. Many 25-hour days later, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) was up and running. Exhausted by the often extreme hours the job demanded (despite taking advantage of & enjoying many opportunities to drive around Europe once again), Dad retired again in 1995, and he & Mom returned Stateside.
NOTE: In 2013, the OPCW was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. In recognition of the major role he played in establishing the organization, Dad received a Nobel Citation honoring his efforts, which hung proudly in the entry hall at home until it had to be put away for safekeeping as his dementia progressed.
Now finally accepting his role as a retiree, Dad happily immersed himself in family life. During a trip to NYC for a family bat mitzvah, he decided to take us on a tour of "the old neighborhood" only to find that the entire area where he & Mom had grown up was totally unrecognizable, with all the old landmarks gone and new buildings stretching as far as the eye could see. There was one single exception: the building where he was born was still standing, complete with a Chinese take-out on the ground floor. We now figure that must have been an omen, because AJ had just begun the adoption process to bring the Pipsqueak into the family... a long, slow process culminating with her Gotcha Day being on Dad's 80th birthday in 2010.
If was only a few months after Miriam came home that Dad experienced the first in a series of medical issues while attending the funeral of a friend's father. (After being told why we suddenly disappeared halfway through the funeral, my friends' comment was, "Tell your father that funerals are not a competitive sport!") After several more episodes, Dad had a pacemaker implanted and his health improved... but by 2015 we could see changes in how he walked & drove, and he began to experience a slowly-increasing number of lapses in his usually excellent memory. I still remember thinking "this is our last good summer" after one particularly active day in 2015 left him a little confused and much more tired than usual.
Dad was given the formal diagnosis of Alzheimer's Disease in early 2016, and he did everything he could to stave off the inevitable decline while making an effort to have as much family time as possible. This included spending time with some of his grand-nieces and -nephews to make sure they got to hear all the stories he could remember about his one sister, their mother/grandmother, stories they had never heard before. (Somewhere in there we think he finally forgave her for all the times she treated him as a dress-up doll when he was very young. Maybe.)
A too-short time with a dementia-oriented social group that Dad enjoyed (and that helped slow the degenerative effects of his disease) was cut short by the pandemic in 2020, and life steadily became more difficult as time progressed. At some point first AJ then I, then some doctors & caregivers came to the realization that we were dealing with Frontal Lobe Dementia and not Alzheimer's Disease -- but the effects and final results made the difference moot. I have only mentioned the difficult times of the past few years in general terms in other blog posts, and have no desire to relive those moments with more details here; suffice it to say, of all the diseases I saw while working in healthcare for over a decade, dementia is the only one I have labeled as obscene.
Dad was in a hospice "transitions" program for almost a year before being discharged late last year due to no longer meeting the Medicare requirements for such care despite his ongoing mental & physical degradation. While in the care of an in-home medical care group, it was discovered that he actually had three separate, simultaneous bacterial infections... and a few days after that, a sonography exam showed a tennis-ball-sized tumor in his bladder. With his condition continuing to deteriorate, Dad was admitted to a different hospice program on the 5th of February; with his condition worsening at a steadily-increasing rate, he was transferred from home to in-hospital hospice care on the 15th. The plan was to stabilize his medical condition and establish a solid pain control program (the cancer was causing a steadily increasing amount of serious pain), then return him home after 3-5 days to finish his time in the room he once referred to as his "happy place" with his family.
It took less than two days for us to realize Dad had left the house where he & Mom had lived for over half a century for the last time. After one truly awful night, hospice staff got the hospital staff straightened out over how they needed to treat him and a solid pain management regimen was put in place. Mom stayed in the room with him 24x7; AJ (with Miriam) and I spent as much time with them as possible; my uncle (that kid brother Dad used to take to Floyd Bennett Field), aunt, and a cousin spent time with us; and a dear family friend drove nearly 600 miles to stay and take care of any-and-everything we needed so we could devote 100% of our attention to Dad during his final days.
On the 18th, Miriam performed a newly choreographed solo dance in a competition. The competition was live-streamed on the Internet, so Mom & I (and our friend J) were able to watch her perform. Miriam had told AJ that she would "dedicate my dance to Grandpa," and repeated this statement backstage to others. Our hearing works even when we are asleep; even though Dad was sleeping during Miriam's performance, I kept my laptop close to him... and the music she danced to was the last piece of music he heard.
As Miriam walked back offstage after dancing, Dad's breathing became fitful, then slowed to just three breaths per minute... and then none. He passed away peacefully and quietly in his sleep, mercifully free of pain, being held by that good friend whom he never actually dated before but stayed happily married to for just shy of 70 years.
He was born in a cold-water flat in Brooklyn. He worked hard his entire life, always choosing jobs that would benefit the public good and serve his country. He always unfailingly put the needs of his family ahead of his own. He survived the crash-landing of one aircraft and bailing out of another. With an abiding love of history (passed on to his loving granddaughter), he managed to travel, and sometimes live full-time, on three continents and sail on three oceans and a sea. His sense of humor and wordplay amused and stymied colleagues from around the world (NATO translators regularly had to pause their translations to figure out how to say what he'd just said English). He developed friendships that bridged political gaps in both the East and the West. He even had a freaking Nobel Prize citation hanging on the wall at home. As he would sometimes say, "Not bad for a dumb kid from Brooklyn."
We love you, Dad, and we are so damn proud of you.
