Mommy, Leah Eber Kaplan, Monroe, Columbia January 2019 R2-20

Our mother was a formidable figure. Her 1928 East High School yearbook pictured her with the title ‘Auburn Beauty’, as she had strong red hair and a great smile. Mommy grew up in a fairly large home on Hyde Park in Rochester. Her father, Harry Eber, owned a small department store which he lost after the market crashed and they moved out of the big house in which she grew up, at which they even had a servant. Her older sister Rose had gone to the University of Rochester, and Mommy, as we called her, went to Cornell on a scholarship, and was very successful majoring in education and French. In those days, there were not too many Jewish students at Cornell, and when my mother graduated Phi Beta Kappa, the head of her department told her that he was recommending her for a teaching position and stated, as she told me: “You are the first person of your race that I am recommending for a teaching position”. In a written memory, she had used the word ‘faith’ rather than ‘race’, so I am not sure what was said.

Deed and Mommy married in 1932, and during the depression if a teacher was married, she automatically lost her job so that more people in families would have employment. Therefore, Lee and Lamont married secretly in New York City and lived together quietly. Nevertheless, another teacher found out she was married, and my mother was fired. She later returned to substitute teaching and when we went off to college she taught French at Brighton High School, a suburb of Rochester adjoining the section of Rochester in which we lived. She was an outstanding teacher, so much so that we have a memory of a nurse approaching Stuart and me when my father was dying at Genesee Hospital in Rochester in December 1993 and told us a story that she recalled from her class with our mother. It seems that in the French Regents exam the year the nurse had our mother as a teacher, every single student in the class received an “A” except for one person. The Regent authorities decided to investigate and were both pleased and somewhat shocked, to realize that every student who received an “A” in fact deserved it. Sorry I never learned French from my mother!

She was also very active in the sisterhood of Temple Beth El, and served as president, and also was chairman of the Temple’s board of education which had several hundred students. She was also active in the Rochester chapter of Hadassah, and she received much recognition for her leadership in her various positions, including president. We all remember Friday evening Shabbat dinners at our home, occasionally with the new or then already serving principal or executive director of the Hebrew school of our Temple. We got to know them quite well, especially Hy Rabin and Jay Stern. Our parents were friends with Rabbi Stuart Rosenberg, and with the extraordinary cantor, Sam Rosenbaum, who prepared us for our Bar Mitzvahs.

I remember too that Hy Freeman, an attorney who lived down the street, and whose children, Arthur and Ruth, were friends of ours, asked Mommy to be a candidate for the Rochester Board of Education. Hy was a Republican member of the City Council, but when he realized that Mommy was a registered Democrat, he withdrew the request. She never ran; too bad.

Friday night dinner was the only non-holiday dinner held in the quite beautiful dining room on Berkeley Street, and always it was roast chicken with chicken soup, or brisket; perhaps once a month we would have a delicious standing rib roast. One time, the Rochester newspaper, either the Democrat and Chronicle or Times-Union ran a photograph of the five of us at a high holy day dinner at our home as they were describing an important Jewish holiday custom.

My mother went to Sabbath services most Saturday mornings, usually with one or more of us, and my parents from time to time went on Friday evenings as well. I went to Hebrew school at the old synagogue and adjoining house on Park Avenue, and the sanctuary was quite beautiful. Just after I went to college, it burned to the ground in a fire that was determined to be accidental, and that loss provided the push for Temple Beth El to build a very large and modern new synagogue on Winton Road. My parents also took an interest in collecting Judaica, antique silver pieces from Europe; candle sticks, Torah breastplates and pointers, and beautiful religious objects. With the support of many contributors, they developed an outstanding collection in the synagogue on Winton Road. Many of those pieces are still there, but quite a few were stolen many years ago. While no one was ever charged, it was assumed that the thief was probably tipped off by someone on the janitorial staff.

Stuart and I shared a bedroom, both at 42 Girard Street and at 237 Berkeley Street, in twin beds with beautiful Birdseye Maple head boards and posts. Unfortunately, when my parents moved out of the house on Berkeley Street, those got sold because none of us had use for, or the good taste for them, one our unfortunate decisions.

Deed had a collection of 1936 FDR campaign buttons, all pinned to two large pennants, and he also had an 1860s Civil War rifle that still worked, using a ball of ammunition and a rod to push the ball into place. He sold the rifle to someone who collected them, and unfortunately sold all of the 50 or 60 campaign buttons, claiming that he didn’t want the three of us to fight over them after he was gone. The three of us were more than disturbed by that decision and sale.

I clearly remember loving rainstorms when I was on Girard Street and I would create a place of safety, like a fort, by turning over the wonderful white wicker furniture my father had and thus creating a cave in which I could hide, protected from the weather. I also did that as a youngster on Berkeley Street in the wonderful large front screened porch, which featured white wicker white wicker furniture including a long chaise lounge and a rocking chair, with all the pieces in light green plastic upholstery. I spent have many happy moments over many years sitting or rocking there reading. I devoured Time, Life, Saturday Evening Post and the Reader’s Digest every time they arrived. I was an inveterate reader of the news in the local papers as well. Deed piled up all the old Time magazines, many years of them, in the lavatory in the basement. Whenever I used it, I simply pulled a different one out of the pile of history, and read it.

Our parents also bought a Compton's Encyclopedia set of perhaps 20 volumes, and often after school, I would simply take one, they were alphabetical, and open to a page and start reading. I think that is reflective of my curiosity and the source of my knowing a lot about many things but not particularly in great depth about any. Some people will graciously suggest otherwise, but as I interpret the essay of Isaiah Berlin, I tend to be more of a fox than a hedgehog.

In those days, there were no women on the board of the Temple, but my mother was still an important figure there. When we went to services on Sabbath, we always walked down at the end of the service to greet the Rabbi, Cantor and Hazzan. The Hazzan, a Rabbi Solomon, led the first part of the Sabbath service and the Cantor led the second part. Rabbi Solomon was an older, elegant and still vibrant person. I remember one Sabbath morning at the Temple on Winton Road, walking down and greeting him during the time that Mommy was slowing down significantly. He asked about her and I responded that she was losing some of her abilities. He made very clear to me that I should always remember that she was doing the best she could. That comment made a deep impression on me. I hope I’m doing the best I can.

When we were growing up on Berkeley Street, before the age of dishwashers, Mommy would wash the dishes by hand, put them in a drainer and we three boys would alternate evenings drying, during which time she would drill us and we would practice our Latin. I was in the honors program at Monroe for the four years of high school, and at the end of 10th grade, the schedule was such that I could take German in my junior year but not French. My mother was extremely upset as she was a French teacher, and I made the wrong decision by not taking first year French in summer school, which in fact Honora did do. I suffered through German for two years, and at Columbia for 1 1/2 years, and it dragged down my academic average at Columbia. In addition, I missed out on all the practice I would have had for two years plus learning French from my mother, who had an impeccable accent. How I have missed that in the years since, as France is a favorite destination, and food (though I’m pretty good at menu French)!

My mother had fencing foils, vests and masks that fit over our heads and we would fence with each other and loved it. She had fenced at Cornell! So, I made another bad decision; I never went out for fencing at Columbia, and Irving DeKoff was one of the great intercollegiate fencing coaches of those years with many guys winning national championships and going to the Olympics, as did my classmate Jim Melcher, who had never picked up a fencing foil until he got to Columbia. Another poor decision, as I decided to emphasize politics at Columbia, rather than any sport.

I ran for the Student Board for one of the two class seats as a freshman, and was elected and reelected for my sophomore year. It was all fun and games, and Steve Trachtenberg, later president of George Washington University, led an effort to impeach Bernie Pucker, the Student Council president, elected by the entire student body. Bernie was spending all his time at Vassar dating a woman who later became his wife and they opened the Pucker Gallery on Newbury Street in Boston. We failed to impeach him, but we did have the votes of Riordan Roett, who became Dean of SAIS at Johns Hopkins, Dick Merrill, who became Dean of the University of Virginia Law School, and Ken Gros Louis, who became Provost at University of Indiana.

Later, during my junior year I managed political campaigns, rather than running myself. I managed the campaign of one of my closest friends, Dave Blicker, for president of the Student Board and he won. In the election that year for class officers, I managed the campaigns of a couple people who narrowly lost their races…..until the election was held over again due to some classmates connected to the rival slate voting twice in an organized effort. One person from my class was expelled for organizing the cheating. Imagine that in those days of student governments having no power, and certainly not rocking any boats or leading revolutions (that came to Columbia nine years later), that people actually cheated to win a meaningless election. I guess the reason we all took the elections so seriously was because the stakes were so low!! There was an article in the Columbia Spectator, the student newspaper, with the headline The Kaplan Machine Versus the Tsucalas Machine. I would see John Tsucalas only occasionally at reunions and we would laugh about our political history at Columbia.

I remember once that Student Board leaders talked to the University officials seeking permission for women to visit in the dorms; when the request was turned down, nothing happened; no one did anything. Finally, in our senior year, women were allowed to visit dorm rooms so long as the door was kept open and feet were on the floor.

However, I also remember panty raids on Barnard, when freshmen particularly, then joined by others, raided the Barnard dorms in the mistaken belief that such particular rite of passage was going to be both fun and thrilling. Not really, unless one wanted to be put on probation, or pushed around by New York’s ‘Finest’. Most of us simply watched guys breaking into the Barnard dorms to steal panties in the days before all residence halls became secured. No really bad stuff ever happened, thankfully.

As a sophomore, I was elected to the Van Am Society, named for a famous Dean Van Amringe. It was an honorary service society that led to many long-term friendships: Dan Shapiro, Paul Nagano, Dave Blicker, Mal Jozoff, Burtt Ehrlich and others. Subsequently, I was elected to the senior Society of Sachems, along with most of my Van Am friends. It was one of the two so-called and self-proclaimed secret societies that sought to influence college and university affairs behind-the-scenes, and sometimes actually were successful in doing that.

My friendship with Dave Blicker started during our freshman year, and at the end of that, the Deans chose Dave to be the freshman coordinator for the incoming class of 1962, and they appointed me to be the associate director, in charge of all logistics. Dave and I maintained our friendship, and I regretted his too-early death in 2012, but I was honored to speak at his memorial service in Sacramento that Thanksgiving week. He had gone to law school in San Francisco and became a civil liberties lawyer, joined the Peace Corps to celebrate his 50th birthday. I got the V. Kann Rassmussen Foundation to fund a project of his in Kenya, where he was based, and he did excellent consulting for us regarding grants in Latin America after he returned from Kenya.