Some people don’t believe in heroes. I’m not one of them. In fact, I think it’s almost a kind of cowardice – but not quite. A friend of mine, for example, who is no coward, said in 2008 as Obama was running for president, that “the left doesn’t believe in heroes.” Okay, I get what he meant: It’s principles and outcomes that matter, not just those who further them. But it’s also those who further them – because someone has to further them.
That’s why, for most of my life, I’ve collected obituaries of people I admired from my hometown. In most cases, they are people I had never heard of until I read about their deaths. Sometimes they are known or even famous people, but more often they are obscure ones who lived important or estimable lives. Someday I’ll reread them and be inspired again.
One motivation is that I know and appreciate that there are better people out there, leading better lives. They are useful models. It’s a psychological thing (some might say psychotherapeutic). But it’s also very much a liberal arts thing to celebrate human achievement and effort and nobility: in short, to celebrate citizenship. I fact, I’d say it’s a kind of citizenship to acknowledge the great citizens in our midst.
A recent case in point is a man named Jack Gorelick, previously unknown to me (or almost anyone else), whose obituary appeared in the New York Times this past February. It was one of the paid notices, not one reported by the obituary staff; but that’s okay, because, paid or otherwise, the facts speak for themselves. Jack’s death notice took up a column more than a foot long – and worth every inch.
He died peacefully at age 104, having been born in Scranton, PA, more than twenty years before our current president was born there. His parents were Jewish immigrants from Belarus. He attended the University of Scranton, became a labor organizer, met his wife on a picket line, and (having been disqualified from the Army in World War II due to an injury) worked in the defense industry welding propellers. Eventually he was able to join the Navy and became an aviation machinist. Later, the family-written obituary states, he and his wife “integrated a swimming pool during a union picnic at a local park against fierce opposition.”
In 1948, Gorelick was fired by his union after being cited as a Communist by the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). Then, the obituary continues, “the young couple were run out of town and moved to New York City where they were part of the progressive community in Greenwich Village.” After that, he was fired from a machine shop for refusing to take a loyalty oath.
So what did our model citizen do for the rest of his life? He spent the next forty years working with, and advocating effectively for, the intellectually disabled.
Among other things, Jack Gorelick helped to close the Willowbrook State School, a notorious dungeon for the disabled, and worked to establish group homes in New York City. He earned a master’s degree in English and a Ph.D. in psychology. He worked in a leadership role at the AHRC Occupation Day Center for intellectually disabled people. And he left a family that included eight great-grandchildren. I guess that was the easy part.
You were all right, Jack.