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Remembering Dad
November 13, 1964 — perhaps 6:15 a.m.
“Boys, wakeup! Daddy died this morning”
I was 13 — Friday, the 13th — 1964 — my brother only 11!
Immature as I was, I’d not thought at all about the fact that my father was dying! At the same time, it made perfect sense that he had died.
My maternal grandfather Max Kesten, accompanied by my aunt, came from New York for the funeral on Sunday. Moses Marx, my other grandfather was in Jerusalem, having moved there 1 1/2 years earlier with my grandmother.
Labor Day Weekend (or around it) 1961, we were going to visit the Copelands in Evanston, Illinois, if the results of Dad’s tests were okay. Our trip was cancelled.
Christmas Vacation, 1961, Ma was crying a lot! Dad had been told that he had a stomach ulcer. Ma was told that he had terminal stomach cancer, and decided he wouldn’t be told — a world away from today — with so many other, more progressive in my mind, perspectives on death and dying.
Dad had surgery and healed, and got medical permission, his cancer in remission. August, 1962 — we went on the Oslofjord, a Norwegian boat from NYC to Bergen, Stavanger, Kristiansand, and finally Oslo.
Then to Stockholm for the Quadra-Annual International Math Conference, no doubt a great thing for dad. We went on…
