Goodbye, Uncle Walter

Mom & Uncle Walter, November, 2012

In case you've been wondering where I've been lately....

The day after my mother passed in January, my Uncle Walter got diagnosed with stage four, metastatic lung cancer. He was given a three to six month prognosis.

Less than a week after that I was taking him to oncology appointments, visiting him in his Long Island home, spending time with my cousins - his daughters - as they cycled through town, coming in as often as they could.

In spite of how unfair this all was, in spite of his (growing) pain, in spite of his (very understandable) fear of death, he somehow maintained an upbeat, positive attitude throughout it all. He was magnificent, amazing.

Last Friday, he lost the fight. His daughters were with him for the last day of his life (I had sat vigil, awaiting their arrival).

His funeral was Monday. Family, neighbors, colleagues, friends all gathered. The rabbi delivered a lovely eulogy. Jess spoke for the daughters (Annette was too overcome to go join her at the podium) and said so many beautiful true things about Walter. And I spoke too.

It was a beautiful May day at the cemetery. Afterward we gathered in the backyard he so loved and ate and drank and shared fond memories of Walter. He was much beloved by all who knew him.

In the coming days I will tell more stories from these last three months, but for now I will just share the words I spoke at the funeral, here:


Walter was my uncle. My mother's "little brother" as she was so fond of calling him in recent years - and he was so UN-fond of hearing. Still, he put up with it with a grimacey smile because he loved his sister - his big sister Sylvia - so very much.

We were a close family. Growing up, "the relatives" meant Walter and his family - my Aunt Eva and cousins Jessie and Annette who were truly my best friends. Besides my parents, the Heimers - as we called them - were my very favorite people, the ones I was closest to, knew I would be intimately connected to for the rest of my life.

And we are.

I loved my Uncle Walter and am so grateful to have had the chance to spend so much time with him over the years -- and especially in this last year of his life which my Mother spent in the Nursing Home just 9/10ths of a mile from his house (yes, I clocked it on the odometer).

My mother absolutely loved Walter's frequent visits. Sometimes I would also be there during them, and the three of us would hang out together in the courtyard. Walter always turned the heads of staff and resident alike - he was such a handsome man, such a dapper dresser, in his suit and fedora -and mom was so proud to tell everyone who he was - her baby brother.

Walt visiting Mom at the nursing home

Every time I would come into my mom's room she was always showing me the flowers and chocolates he had brought her on his last visit. "My brother is so good to me" she would tell me, so grateful for his company, so much love twined between them.

And that love has roots that go all the way back. My mother often told me the story of going to see her new - baby - brother who had just been born. At that time they didn't allow children under 16 into hospitals, so my then 5 year-old mother stood outside the building, under Grandma Dunia's hospital room window - and she held Walter up for Mom to see.

Recently, at a family gathering, Jessie went to the basement for a bottle of seltzer and came up with an old journal of Walter's from 1941 when he would have been 14. (You never know what you're going to find in that basement.)

This entry from February says so much: "My older sister is a swell gal. My ideal. I wish she was born a boy then we could have some real fun."

And in spite of her being a girl, they did have fun, throughout their lives together. In jazz clubs in the 1940s, at family holidays - always together, on vacation in Maine, hanging out in the lush backyard of Walt & Eva's Port Washington house..

The other day I was rifling through my old photo box - you know why - and came up with a great shot of Walt & Eva from 1968. I showed it to my husband Danny and he commented: Eva looks great and Walter... looks like movie star! And indeed he did.

 

Everyone thinks my own son Ethan takes quite a bit after the Heimer clan, looks a lot like Walter. He does. I can only hope he grows up to be a warm, loving mensch like my Uncle Walter. There's a good chance of it - he already has his huge - and not always appropriate - sense of humor.

~*~*~*~

Goodbye Walter. You were loved. You will be missed. Keep my mom good company, Ok?

Some Heart: Sylvia Steinhardt's Eulogy

Mom, Thanksgiving 2012

Today, Sunday March 3rd, we held a memorial service for my mother, Sylvia Steinhardt, who died in January.  We celebrated her interesting, 90 year long life, and we said goodbye.

In attendance were my husband and kids, my mother's 85 year old "kid" brother and his family, my brother Bruce (Sylvia's step-son) and most of his family, plus many friends, in-laws, and a pair of dear old friends of my parents, nearly the last surviving members of that once-large clan.

Photos from various points of my mother's life were on display. Anyone who wished to share a memory of Syl was invited to speak, and quite a few did, including both of my sons.

But first I read a blog post (found here) written immediately after, and about Mom's dying moments.  And then I read this eulogy:

The day before she died, the cardiologist who first met my mom in the ER a few days prior came in to her room to speak with me. "When you said her aortic stenosis was critical you weren't kidding. It was SUPER critical. In fact" - he added, clearly quite impressed - "I have never seen anyone with such a tight valve still alive and so asymptomatic... That's some heart your mother has!"

And I say yes! That was some heart my mother had.

In fact I would say it was her defining feature: My mother’s capacity to love and be loved. Her big generous, open heart, and how many hearts she lives on in will be her defining legacy.

She had a warmth, a natural curiosity about people. Spend five minutes with her and she'd know your life story, the names of your children (or parents, or both) and where your ancestors came from.

She was also genuinely gracious, sincerely grateful to everyone for everything done for her.

In the hospital, in her very last days, she even whispered a "Thank you" to the nurse giving her a shot of vitamin K. The nurse turned to me, her face alight, and told me she had never been thanked before for giving a patient an injection.

That was Mom.

My father, as much as he loved his family, was defined by his life's work: his photography.

My mother, like so many women (especially of her generation), was defined by her relationships, the people she loved and who loved her. And at this she excelled, oh so well.

Mom made friends everywhere she went. At Carnegie East House, the assisted living community she had moved into with my father, and where she continued to live as a widow until her disastrous, hip-breaking fall last May, she had two close friends of a similar temperament: smart, funny, artistic, literate, left-leaning and bohemian. Not your typical "little old ladies" by any stretch of the imagination.

They called themselves "The 3 Musketeers" and took every opportunity to laugh at the foibles of old age and their situation, vowing not to become like some of the farbissinas* at the joint.

The staff at the nursing home where Mom spent the last six months of her life were shocked when I called to give them the news of her passing. "Oh, no! Not our DDF!" they all cried.

That was her particular nomenclature: I have been her D.D.D. for years - Dear, Darling Daughter - (and she my D.D.M.). And the women who looked after her at the home had become her D.D.F. - Dear, Darling Friends.

It was somehow fitting that nursing home where my mother spent the last six months of her life at was back on her beloved Long Island - a place that defined and encompassed so much of her life - where she grew up, held her first jobs, where she raised her family - me - where she came into her own as Sylvia Steinhardt of Steinhardt Gallery.

As she was living in the same community as her brother Walter - Port Washington – they were able to spend much time together at the end. His visits, and those of his children – my cousins – and their children, brought her so much pleasure.

Whenever I would visit, she would point out the flowers brightening up her nightstand. “Aren’t these lovely, Walter always brings flowers, he is so good to me.”

What was amazing about Mom was that this kindness, this deeply loving nature was found in a woman also funny and complex, sophisticated and keenly intelligent. How intelligent?

When I was about ten, Mom decided she wanted to take some classes at Nassau community college. Since she had never been to college, she started with Freshman English. For her final paper, did a study on how the classic English ballads changed when they came to America that included an amazing analysis and an audio tape recording of both Peter, Paul and Mary’s and Led Zeppelin’s version of Hangman. It was graduate level work... for a Freshman English class. Needless to say the professor was stunned. (She got an A+.)

I was sometimes sad thinking of what my mother could have done, might have been if she had grown up in a family that valued girls and thought them worthy of higher education, but sadly, that wasn’t the case.

My grandmother valued WORK and MAKING MONEY, and so that’s what my mother did, after graduating high school, finding a job in a furniture store, then coming to work at her family’s candy shop afterwards in the evenings.

Shortly thereafter, the US entered WWII, and mom found herself joining the throngs of other young women swept up in war work… yes, my mom was a Rosie the Riveter.

She worked at Grumman Aircraft in small airplane parts through the war. And I remember feeling terribly proud of my mother for doing this, when I became aware of how brave and radical that was.

After that, mom began to work in clerical positions, eventually to become a top fundraiser for the Joint Defense Appeal – the fundraising arm of the American Jewish Committee and the Anti-Defamation League.

This job was in THE CITY, where Mom had finally left her parents home and moved to, with the help of a good therapist, and much to her mother’s dismay (the shanda of an unmarried daughter leaving home having kept my mother bound there too long before she finally broke free).

At this point my mother began an exciting phase of living her own life: going to museums, plays, films, listening to jazz, dating interesting men – including William Styrone’s roommate - (and even living with one for a while). But she still hadn’t found her one true love.

That she finally did in the summer of 1958, at a resort in the Berkshires called The Music Inn, where my father, recently divorced, was also vacationing. They met, sparks ignited, they discovered that they lived mere blocks away from each other in Greenwich Village.

Vowing to play it cool and go slow, they then proceeded to see each other every day, becoming inseparable as soon as they got home to the city. And in a few short months, on March 1st, 1959, they married.

And then, things changed, rapidly. My father had two teenage children from his previous marriage – my brother Bruce and sister Lois – and immediately after my folks married, my Dad’s ex-wife had to leave the country for almost a year (it’s complicated – don’t ask), and left the kids with them.

A friend of my mother’s had joked that in marrying my father, she has gone from swinging single gal in the Village, to matronly mother of teenage kids on the Upper West Side in one fell swoop.

And that wasn’t far from the truth. Furthermore by the time Bruce and Lois had returned to their mother’s home, Mom was pregnant herself… with me.

My mother loved being pregnant, had wanted a child of her own for a long time, and had been unsure if she would even be able to have one at the unheard of old age – for that time – of 37.

She loved to tell me stories from her pregnancy – of how she had gained so much weight right off the bat, that when she, at 5 months along, went to the maternity ward to visit my Aunt Eva and see her new niece – my cousin Jessie, someone said to her “I know who’s going got have her baby tonight!”

How, while absentmindedly crossing Broadway against the light, a truck driver had yelled out to her: “Hey Lady, watch where you’re going, you know you can get knocked DOWN, too!”

And THAT is classic mom – having a great sense of humor. As well as a tendency to curse like a sailor. Salty as well as sweet.

Her humor - and her cursing – stayed with her, through to the end. When she was in acute rehab, trying to heal from her broken hip, she was working on walking down the hall with a walker. It was hard. She was weak and tired and in pain and the therapists were pushing her to take a few more steps. “I don’t want to.” She complained. “I just want to sit down, can’t I fucking sit down?”

“Sylvia…” said the therapist with a disapproving tone of voice.

“Oh.” Said my mother “I’m not supposed to curse.”

“Yes” said the therapist,

“It upsets the other patients.” Said my mother.

“Yes!” the therapist chirped, glad she was “getting it.”

“OK” Mom said. Then with PERFECT timing that would have made a borsht belt comedian proud, she added, under her breath: “Fuck ‘em”

In this she and my very funny father were well matched. In fact they were well matched in nearly everything, a true pair of soul-mates, bonded by a love that burned bright to the very end.

She took such loving care of my father as he was failing, he the center of her life, her anchor. It was not easy to be with him in those last, plummeting, months, when he was so difficult, drifting & out of rationality. But Mom made sure to only curse him out when her back was turned to him so that, deaf, he would have no idea.

After Dad passed, Mom missed him fiercely. She frequently teared up thinking about him, telling me yet again and again: “He wasn’t just my husband he was my best friend.”

And they had had a good life. They LOVED to travel, and for twenty years - after I left home and before they became too frail - they explored the world together. Mom and Dad took trips to Greece, Hungary, Italy, Turkey, Alaska, Mexico, Trinidad, Israel, and Bali - to name a few places on their expansive itinerary.

And, true to their nature, these were not your standard touristy tours of national monuments. Because my parents were genuinely interested in other people and cultures they went deep into the hearts of these places, seeking out the spots the locals frequented, letting themselves enter into the true spirit of journeying.

Even when they took tours, these were folk dance tours, and they involved going to small villages, learning the local dances from the people who lived there, then joining hands and joyously dancing together with them.

What afforded them these wonderful trips was that the family business, Steinhardt Gallery, had finally become incredibly successful - the move from Westbury to Huntington perfectly timed to coincide with the resurgence of Huntington’s downtown.

Earlier I had said that Mom was defined by her relationships, and yet that is not entirely true. She was also defined by and hugely proud of The Steinhardt Gallery - that she had been a part of, as my father’s partner, since the beginning. It was where both Mom’s impeccable taste and people skills could come together and flourish.

She loved being surrounded by and dealing with beautiful things, She loved getting to know and interact with the craftspeople she bought from, the customers – who often became friends, and the staff, who became an extended family.

In fact, my parents really ran the business like a family, in a good way. Everyone who worked there, and all the artisans they dealt with were treated with fairness and respect, and, always, warmth and humor.

My mother loved the fact that she was not just Sylvia Steinhardt but Sylvia Steinhardt of Steinhardt Gallery. And it always made her day when someone would either recognize her or the name of the gallery when they were far from home – on a cruise up the Alaskan coast for example, or on a Caribbean island. “Oh,” they would say ”I LOVE that place, all my favorite gifts come from there.” And Mom would just beam.

And I loved being a part of the Gallery, too. Growing up in a family business meant being intimately connected with my parents working lives in a way that folks whose parents go “off to the office” can never be.

This is one thread in the fabric of the close relationship I had with my mother. She loved children and being a mother. She included me in her life, sharing her passions with me, telling me her stories and listening to mine.

I remember countless trips to art museums; watching classic Japanese movies on channel 13, snuggled together on the sofa; Mom teaching me how to Lindy in the kitchen during a nostalgia craze in my high school years.

And now, everywhere I go, everything I light upon, I find traces of her. And I find evidence that so much of who I am has come down from her.

Recently, I found myself in the dentist's chair, the radio tuned to the classical music station. Beethoven's 6th symphony came on (the "Pastorale") and I found myself conducting with my hands. "Oh, you know this one?" my dentist asked, surprised, explaining that he usually has the radio tuned to classic rock but his previous patient expressed a strong preference for WQXR.

"Yes," I told him, "it was my mother's favorite symphony, she played it often in my childhood."

"Sorry," he apologized, knowing of my recent loss, "that must be painful." But somehow it wasn't. It instead filled my heart to the brim with gratefulness that my mother had passed on her love of music, that she had shared with me, her child, all the things that brought her joy, and that their beauty lives on in me now.

As much joy as Mom found in parenthood, she found that joy doubled as a grandmother, seeing her feelings replicated in me. She loved watching me revel in my own children, yet another bond between us: we were both mothers.

Mom also just flat out loved being a grandmother, first to my brother Bruce’s children, Rachel and Simon, and then recently to my twin boys, Ethan and Jacob.

She never happier than when holding her baby grandsons, rocking them to sleep. When they were toddlers, Mom always got down on the floor to play with them (even though with her bad knees she needed help to get back up afterwards) and seemed as delighted in building a block tower or putting together the pieces of a simple puzzle as the boys did.

Delight. That’s a word that describes mom’s enthusiastic response to so much in life. Not that she didn’t have her dark days, but she was always pulled back to the light by her passions.

Mom loved, among many other things, and in no particular order: people, purple, chocolate, art, nature, the ocean, lox and bagels, chocolate, Birkenstocks, a good joke, flowers, family, birds, dogs, cats - in general and Willie, her last cat, in particular, The Steinhardt Gallery, seltzer, handmade things, chocolate, Scandinavian furniture, travel, folk dancing, bird watching, African violets, Art Nouveau, word puzzles, artichokes, lobster, Maine, Long Island, music, poetry, Paul Klee, Shakespeare, Broadway Musicals, modern dance, champagne, hugs, Sunday mornings, babies, silver jewelry, the Chrysler building, chocolate, her husband Jim, children – in general, and Me, her child, in particular.

She loved me in a way that left no smidgen of doubt. She loved me so deeply, so freely: as a mother loves her children – with pride and acceptance and gratefulness for my mere existence.

I whisper in my children's ears (now, mostly while they are asleep): "I will always be your mother, and I will always love you."

She taught me to love like that, my one and only mother.

And I loved her in return, fiercely.

And I miss her every day.


(p.s. If you are a regular reader of this blog and some of the words of this eulogy seem familiar congratulations, you are observant. I did, indeed lift and rework a few paragraphs from a number of past blog posts to use as elements in its creation.)

And the Hop goes on...

Thursday again, and I'm hopping away on the:

This week, there is not so much a question to answer as a direct command: "Tell us a funny memory involving your child or children." (or we make you walk the plank?)

OK then, nothing like being asked to produce funny on the spot that is nearly guaranteed to freeze me up in my place. (OK, yeah you have figured out that my M.O. with these things is to complain about the meme in a funny way for a long time, and then comply with it.  Leave a girl her dignity and pretend you didn't notice, okay?)

Funny, OK, funny... holy crapola, batman, my mind is a total blank. Maybe it's the sleep deprivation... eight bloody years of one ASD early-riser coupled with an ADD late-to-bed insomniac yakking away at midnight have taken their toll.  My brain is not what it used to be, the steel trap has transformed into leaky sieve.

So many stories swirling round my brain... but this one has sparkled and caught my mind's eye:

My father passed away in mid March of this year.  Instead of holding a funeral at the time, we had him cremated (according to his wishes) and then, a few weeks later, we held a memorial gathering to celebrate his life and his work, and also the 93rd birthday he nearly made it to.  This was also according to his wishes, matching his upbeat, larger-than-life personality.  He wanted a festive gathering in his honor, he wanted a party, so we gave him one.

On March 28th, nearly a hundred family members and friends, residents and staff of the assisted living community where he and my mother lived gathered in the common room to celebrate my dad.  I needed for my kids to be there, to see family, to say goodbye to their Grandpa, to remind their sad, sad Grandma that life goes on.  But I was worried about Jacob and his ability to sit still and remain quiet while I gave the main eulogy at the start of the event.

Turns out I was worrying needlessly.  Jake sat right in front of me, next to my husband, and throughout my long eulogy he remained quiet as a mouse, not even a peep, his eyes trained on me the whole time.  I guess I gave quite a performance, because when I finished the crowd applauded (which embarassed me thoroughly).

Seeing all the people around him clapping for his mother, Jake joined in enthusiastically, then upped the ante by encouraging me with a shouted out: "Great job, Mom!"

A wave of laughter spread through the room, and it was just what we needed to start up the next part of the day: everyone sharing our funny stories and memories of Dad, including retelling all his favorite, awful, pun-filled jokes.  See?  Sometimes it's good to have someone who is completely unaware of the social rules with you, to shake things up a bit.

I was so proud of my son for his ability to find his calm listening space, and for showing his support for me so vocally at the end.  You, rocked, Jakey!  (Ethan, on the other hand, played his DS throughout the event, but I'm guessing that was his way of keeping the scary, sad feelings comfortably at bay.)

So now, come hop along with me....

Goodbye, Goodbye, Goodbye: Jim Steinhardt’s Eulogy

Today, Sunday March 28th, we held a memorial service for my father, Jim Steinhardt, who died two weeks ago.  We celebrated his life of nearly 93 years, and we said goodbye. Family members gathered, some who hadn’t seen each other in eons, since childhood or a landmark event long ago, when we were all younger and skinnier.

My many mommy friends came to offer support, bear witness; and so did my Mother’s last few remaining ones: tough old birds and goats who, like my folks, had lived long and had the white hair and softly leathered faces to prove it.  Anyone who wished to share a memory of Jim was invited to speak.  First I read an abbreviated version of my blog post, "Nearly Finished Business" written in early March, when it was clear it was near the end of Dad's life.  And then I read this eulogy:


Well, Dad, you broke your word: you always told us that you were going to live forever.  You had too much to do, no time for this dying stuff.  Like Woody Allen you preferred to achieve immortality through not dying, but barring that, you certainly wanted to do it through your work living on. And it will.

What a body of work it is.  My father had quite an eye, and wasn’t afraid to use it.  He thought his taste was better than anyone else’s and he was usually right.  He was an artist through and through: a painter, a sculptor, but most of all a photographer; he used his camera to show us the world we looked at every day, but never saw.  

My father was a loving and generous, though not perfect man. I know that the father of my childhood was a very different one than my sister Lois and my brother Bruce had, and then the father of my adult years was different still: more present, more connected.  In the same way, he was a very different husband to my mother than to his first wife, Janet, those many years ago.

My parents had a love match that lasted fifty one years. I can only hope to be so lucky.  They met in summer, at a resort in the Berkshires called The Music Inn, each having recently come out of a relationship; my Dad a marriage, my Mom… not quite a marriage (they were shacking up).

They liked each other fierce and found out they lived mere blocks away in Greenwich Village.  Vowing to play it cool and go slow, they then proceeded to see each other every day, becoming inseparable as soon as they got home to the city. 

My father knew that my mother’s previous boyfriend had asked her to marry him many, many times, and she had held off, knowing he just wasn’t quite the right one.  Hopelessly smitten and hoping that he WAS the right one, my father soon proposed, saying  “I’m only going to ask you to marry me three times, and this is the first.”  She said yes, of course, (who could resist such a handsome and charming man) and the rest, as they say, is history.

One thing my parents had in common, was that they had both spent many years in and out of psychoanalytic psychotherapy.  A therapist Dad went to late in life spoke to me with amazement that a man in his 80’s was looking to change and grow, become a better self.  And that was my Dad: wanting to do more, go further, an explorer to the end, his openness to transformation one of his most admirable qualities.

My father struggled with feelings of worthlessness, mixed, of course, with an overblown sense of entitlement, a not uncommon brew.  As a child, he had felt inferior to other boys who had present fathers, when he did not. His own father was barely there, sporadically coming and mostly going, leaving Dad a lost boy, fatherless.  At 92 he still felt the sting, still cried at the memories. 

He told me the exception to this was at camp where all the boys were temporarily fatherless, like him.  Shy and receding at school, at camp he excelled, becoming captain of the basketball team, a lead actor in plays -- directed by the camp’s drama counselor Julie Garfinkel, known to the world as John Garfield.   Later in life Dad grew more and more into this, his camp self, and that was more the man I knew, confident in his decisions; a man who knew what he wanted and made things happen.

So, Dad was not one of those silent, cipher type fathers.  He was a great story teller, self reflexive; the stories he told - of childhood, his first marriage, his working life - were not just descriptions of who, what, where.  He told his stories from the inside, sharing thoughts and feelings, analyzing the ways past events had cascaded down through his life shaping and shading the present.

So I can say that I truly knew my father. And while nothing makes the pain of his loss disappear, it does lessen it, because I have all these stories living on fully inside me. 

One of the stories he told me was of a pivotal moment, one of those junctures which mark a sharp “before” and “after” forever on our personal timelines.  This moment came to him while folk dancing.  And Dad came to dance through my mother.  She had been an International Folk Dancer in her youth, and was she ever graceful, (still is).

After I had left home for college, and my parents had their evenings once again to themselves, my mother found a regular folk dance group nearby, and since they were that kind of couple, she took Dad with her.  Not a natural joiner, he came along a little reluctantly at first, and then with blooming enthusiasm. 

Dad told me that back in his earlier days, he had always felt very separate from other people, more of an observer than a participant.  He confessed that he had in fact, been somewhat of a snob.  Considering himself an intellectual, he felt different, superior to the common folk of middle America (his passion for football notwithstanding).   He would resist engaging in conversation with strangers, thinking, “what could I possibly have to say to them, or they to me that would be of interest”. 

Then one day when he was beginning to dance regularly with my mother, he stepped into the circle to begin a dance.  As he took the hands of his fellow dancers on either side and began to follow the steps, he felt something new: he felt himself move out beyond the borders of his skin, to flow into the person on his right and his left and then he felt them all becoming one circle; the dancers becoming the dance.

It felt like community, that thing he had never known: a joining with others vastly different, yet the differences not mattering as he danced in step with these other humans.  He suddenly knew that what connected him to other people was larger than what separated him from them. This was a visceral and completely spontaneous moment of revelation for him.  And he said it changed him forever.

This wonderfully coincided with the beginning of my parents’ period of grand travels.  For twenty years, they explored the world together. Mom and Dad took trips to Greece, Hungary, Italy, Turkey, Alaska, Mexico, Trinidad, and Israel, to name a few places on their expansive itinerary.

And these were not your standard touristy tours of national monuments.  Because my father was a photographer and because my parents were now both people-engagers, which my mother had ever been, they went deep into the hearts of these places, seeking out the spots the locals frequented, letting themselves enter into the “is-ness” of a place.

Dad photographed seine hauling fishermen on a beach in Grenada bringing in the catch, and then grabbed the rope to help pull.  My parents wandered into a village, deep in the upcountry hills of Bali, where preparations for a wedding were taking place, and they stayed the day, joined the wedding party, and Dad spontaneously became their wedding photographer.

Even when they took tours, these were folk dance tours, and they involved going to small villages, learning the local dances from the people who lived there, then joining hands and joyously dancing together with them. 

What afforded them these wonderful trips was that the business Dad had owned since he quit advertising photography in 1963, the Steinhardt Gallery, had finally become an incredibly successful gallery, mostly of American and International Handcrafts (that international part allowing them to most conveniently - and truthfully - write off most of their trips as business expenses.)  My father and mother ran it together by then, and the 1975 move from Westbury to Huntington was perfectly timed to coincide with the resurgence of Huntington’s downtown.

While Dad had never set out to become a businessman, he ended up as a happily successful one.  And a big part of this is that he ran the business like a family, in a good way. Everyone who worked there, and all the artisans they dealt with were treated with fairness and respect, and, always, warmth and humor.

There was this feeling growing up that the gallery was another entity, the fourth member of our nuclear family.  I was in on it since the beginning, as a young girl spending Saturdays there with Mom and Dad, crayon coloring on matte board scraps.

By the time I went off to college I was a full time staff member: sales clerk, assistant buyer, gift wrap specialist (I was good with the odd shapes).  Working with my father brought a collegial familiarity that anyone who hasn’t grown up in a “mom and pop” shop doesn’t quite get.  And I’m so glad that I got to have that.

Some time after my parents sold the gallery and retired to Florida, a private collector of photography found my father and bought a body of his work, a big fan.  And this reawakened in Dad a burning desire to have his photographs not be forgotten.

My father often told me that he never became a famous photographer because of a nearly Shakespearean series of bad, unlucky breaks combined with a retiring personality.  He said “I wasn’t good at self promotion, something always held me back.” 

Anyone who has spent time with him in these last years of life knows he has now made up for that.  He became fond of telling anyone and everyone in earshot what a great photographer he was.  And he was not wrong, his best photographs are astonishing.

We who have lived with these images for many years have maybe developed an over familiarity with them and are used to their beauty and lyric vision, that amazing eye Dad had.  But looking over his work recently, preparing for this memorial, I was again stunned by their power.  He does belong in that pantheon with the “greats” and it is my one regret that I could not muster an all out campaign to bring him to an even larger audience in his lifetime. 

And in his later years he so enjoyed the recognition, basked in the spots of bright light that came his way as he was being rediscovered by the photography community.  B&W Magazine, a high end, high gloss, fine art photography magazine did a lovely four page “spotlight” feature on him.

His work now sits on the walls, and in the vaults of some major players: The Jewish Museum, The Brooklyn Museum of Art, The De Young Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco, Eastman House, The International Center for Photography, The Museum of the City of New York, and I could go on.

Just last year, The National Art Gallery in Washington, D.C. acquired a body of his work for their permanent collection, and it made Dad very happy to be considered a national treasure.

In 2006, a photograph of his from the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s permanent collection was chosen to hang in the wonderful Susan Sontag tribute show “On Photography”, illustrating a paragraph of text about finding beauty in the mundane, the discarded.   We didn’t find out about this until the very end of the show’s run, as the curator had only my parents old Florida address and it took months for her letter to wend its way North to the senior residence on the Riverdale / Yonkers border where my folks were then living.  But as soon as we knew, I rushed my parents into the city to meet the curator and see the show, just in time.

Dad’s health was in a bit of a downturn at that moment, so he was frail and needed to use a loaner wheel chair to visit with his photograph in a gallery on an upper floor.  Still, seated in front of it, he had the singular pleasure of looking at a photograph of his hanging on the wall of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

As he sat there, some young European tourists approached him and asked if he were not indeed the photographer, Jim Steinhardt.  It turns out they were German photography students, had studied his work at University, and were thrilled and honored to meet him.   Dad glowed like the sun that day, in spite of his infirmity.

And throughout all the ups and downs the roller coaster of his health has taken in the years since, one thing has remained constant: whenever, however he could, Jim would work; planning books on his themes: children at play, men in the street, the abstract beauties of ordinary objects.

Looking over his photos, he was visiting with old friends: the cement worker, shirtless, sporting six pack abs – that always sells well in his San Francisco gallery; 4 year old Bruce enduring a haircut; Lois, a living doll far cuter than the windowful behind her; a man’s crooked arm, hand clutching cigar, dangling pearls; inside the protective embrace of a giant stone eagle, a woman reads a book, absorbed; a faded doyenne seated at a sidewalk café, contemplates the abyss; a bespectacled Santa reading the paper, sips a cup of java.

Dad went through his old negatives again, finding hidden gems, wondering ”why the hell didn’t I print this the first time?” 

And there was, of course, that other constant in my father’s life, my mother, Sylvia Heimer Steinhardt, whose love and support made all Dad’s work possible.  And then, at the end, when even the work had finally drifted away, there was still my mother, their love.

When he still had words, he would tell her over and over how glad he was to have her, how much her love meant to him. It was not easy to care for him in these last, plummeting, months, when he would senselessly rage, as well as praise. But Mom made sure to only curse him out when her back was turned to him so that, deaf, he would have no idea. 

At the very, very end, he hated to be parted from her for even a minute, knowing that she was all that he needed. And there was my mother, holding Dad’s hand, softly rubbing his back; his beacon against the coming darkness.

Through the magic time machine of Facebook, I have recently reconnected with a number of childhood friends that I had not spoken with for decades.  As I had posted a notice of my father’s passing, a number of these friends have reached out to me, and it has been wonderful to hear from people who knew my Dad in his prime.

He has been slowly fading for so long now, that most of my current friends have only ever seen the shadow father, deaf and weakened with only occasional sparkle. I’d like to read a note here, from Alice who was a friend from 3rd grade on through high school.

“Dear Varda,
Joan sent me the message about your father’s upcoming memorial service. I wish to extend to you my deepest condolences for your loss. I always remember both of your parents with fondness. Your father was warm and funny and your mother always open and loving. Your mother called me ‘Alley Cat’; it made me feel special that she had a nickname for me. What I remember most about your father was his free, artistic spirit, which made me think anything in life is possible.
With best wishes, Alice”

Dad I like to think that you have passed on your “free, artistic spirit” to your children, your grandchildren and all whose lives you have touched, if ever so tangentially, like those German students at the Met.

I remember when I was a teen and you were teaching photography at a college – a feat you were so proud of, having never made it beyond high school yourself - you had gotten your feedback evaluations and it made you so happy that your students had loved you, had written glowing reports of how encouraging and inspiring you had been to them.  It was important to you to feel that you were passing on, handing down to the next generations something of import; you couldn’t give your students your incredible eye, but you could help them to open up their own and teach them to see like photographers. 

It is a legacy to be proud of.  You were a father I could be, and have been, proud of.  You will live on, both as a person in the hearts and minds of those who have known and loved you, and as an artist: the beauty and depth of your work astounding and inspiring a multitude more.  Goodbye, Dad.  I love you.