THIS week would have been the 100th birthday of my father.
Where the old West Side Jewish community of Denver once stood, along the banks of the Platte River, there is no Jewish community today, nor hardly any residences at all. But in 1911, Max Goldberg, the eighth of nine children, was brought into this world there by Dr. Morris Krohn, in a very small house on Paul Court, not far from the Platte.
Dr. Krohn took no money for his services because the family had no money to give. That was common back then. The doctor was pleased to receive a nice meal in exchange, or some other barter.
The scramble to put bread on the table was, back then, not a metaphor. The few pennies, literally, that my Dads older brothers brought in daily from selling newspapers on the street corners of downtown Denver made daily bread possible.
Later, when my Dad was only eight or nine years old, he too began hawking newspapers on a street corner (his corner); but he would detour on the way home to buy his mother her favorite dish, an ice cream cone.
His father had died in the great influenza epidemic of 1918. It was only his mother Anna Goldberg, a widow, who was left to raise her nine children.
Parenthetically, eight of her nine children were also sick with the influenza in 1918 when their father died. Only his widow and daughter Rose could even attend Papas funeral, way out at Rose Hill Cemetery, which they had to reach on foot.
ONE hundred years is a short time in the span of history. But in the normal human span, a century is a long time, particularly in this sense: There is a lot of time to forget; an incremental erasure of the memories, the sweetness, the accomplishments, the struggles, the friendships, the camaraderie. A century is a long time indeed.
Thus I speak to empty rooms. Almost no one is listening for the simple reason that the listeners, just like my grandfather since 1918, live in the cemetery. Almost no one who knew my Dad is still with us.
Still, what beautiful memories; not least (at least for starters) of that mother of nine, my Bubbe; and of her children. They all lived into their late eighties or late nineties; my Dad was the exception, a drastic one, departing from this world a few days after his 61st birthday.
Bubbe was steeped in Yiddish and I hardly understood her; I still dont know how she passed the citizenship exam. She conveyed such a great love of Yiddishkeit in all its senses: the religion, the language, the spirit.
She, like her husband, hailed from Brisk in Lithuania. To this day, listed on the chart of the Chevra Shas in Congregation Zera Abraham is the yahrzeit of Bubbes father-in-law, Azriel Goldberg, who, sometime after 1894, followed his son Yechiel to America.
I TREASURE the friendships with those living few who did know my Dad, who remember his columns in the Denver Post, his late Saturday-night talk television program (perhaps the first of its kind in the nation), his separate, Sunday-night one-on-one television interviews with the great, the near great and the obscure (including John Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr.), the way he broke down barriers for Jews, the way his mentshlichkeit built bridges in a city that needed to recover from the days and the popularity of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s.
I remember Phil Francis, who told my Dad what a great job he was doing with the Jewish News. To our great surprise and emotion, it turned out that after Phil Francis died, his will contained $250 for Dad because he was doing a great job with the Jewish News.
With the new courthouse named after the late Gov. Ralph Carr going up a couple of blocks from the current offices of the IJN, I think of Dad. Dad ran Ralph Carrs election campaign in 1939, and to this day we possess the letter of gratitude Carr sent to Dad after the election for being instrumental in its success.
Mostly, I think of the fun times on the golf course at Green Gables (how Dad would be shocked that it is no more) or on the driving range, where Berkshire at Lowry now stands; I remember the summer excursions searching for the best watermelon on the stands that sprung up on East Colfax in the summer (and how Dad could consume half the watermelon himself!); I remember Dads reverence for the late Rabbi Charles C. E. Kauvar of BMH, and how Dad wanted me to meet with him personally before my Bar Mitzvah, and how Rabbi Kauvar described his Torah study schedule back in Vilna, Lithuania, before he came to America at age 13 or so; I remember Dad studying Pirkei Avot with me in my basement bedroom; I cherish the way he could later gently poke fun at me when I laughed despite myself for my (the way I described it) very rare requests for money when I was studying in yeshiva in Israel, while, in fact, the requests were frequent indeed. And he would say, I wish I had a rich father like you have.
(Or he would say: Here lies Joe he had the right of way.)
(Or: Influence is something you think you have until you try to use it.)
(Or: Money is not the most important thing in the world . . . but it sure runs a close second.)
(Or: Appreciate your health while you have it.)
I remember the walks we used to take along Monaco Parkway when he was recovering from surgery, and the time he took me along to the studio at Channel 7 while he interviewed Ted Kennedy. This was in 1964, shortly after Kennedy was elected US senator from Massachusetts, just one year after his brother was assassinated.
These interviews were unrehearsed. Dad asked Kennedy in advance whether any topic was off limits. Kennedy said no.
Dads first question: Do you have any special memories of your brother?
Kennedy turned red, and angry, stood up and strode out of the studio! It took all of Dads persuasive powers to convince Kennedy to return for the interview.
The loss was too painful just a year after the assassination. Kennedy just couldnt talk about it.
Nineteen years ago, the IJN published a special Literary Supplement, with Dads old friends recalling him and their friendship. Alas, now virtually all the contributors to that edition are also no longer here, people like Bill Daniels and Marvin Davis, Mandel Berenbaum and Sam Berman, Joe Awful Coffee and Bernard Diamond, Judge Sherman Finesilver and Lou Gelt, Rabbi Daniel Goldberger and Bob Howsam, Joe Mosko and Alfred M. Neuman, Dr. Lou Radetsky and I.J. Shore, Harry Yaffe and Henny Youngman.
It is nice, o so nice, to record the living contributors to that edition: Pearle Rae Levey, Sheldon E. Friedman, my siblings, Jack Greenwald, Larry Mizel, Harold and Rosette Steinberg, and Cantor Maurice Weiss. Not to mention and needless to say my mother, Miriam Goldberg, may she live and be well.
Maybe, just maybe, those echoes off the walls of the empty rooms into which I speak of my Dad, who would have been 100 years old this week, might reach you, might touch you.
Copyright © 2011 by the Intermountain Jewish News
