Recent passings

Hot on the heels of the tragic demise of 80's heartthrob Corey Haim comes news of the death of Peter Graves, 83, the TV and movie actor best known for his role as Jim Phelps on the CBS series "Mission:Impossible." Many trivia players will know that Phelps was the younger brother of James Arness, TV's Matt Dillon on "Gunsmoke." As a youngster, I first became aware of Graves when watching him as the adult star of "Fury," the children's Saturday morning show about the raven-haired horse and his friend Bobby, who lived on the Broken Wheel Ranch. When "Mission: Impossible" first hit the airwaves, it wasn't Jim Phelps who led the Impossible Mission Force, but Steven Hill, whose character was Daniel Briggs. Hill, who would later go on to play Adam Schiff on the original "Law and Order" series for a decade, didn't pass muster with the suits at Desilu Studios back when Lucy and Desi were still at the top of their game. After the first season ended in 1966, they decided to hire Graves to take over as the leader of the IMF and the rest was TV history. Graves, along with then huband and wife team Martin Landau (Rollin Hand) and Barbara Bain (Cinnamon Carter), Greg Morris (Barney Collier) and Peter Lupus (Willie Armitage) were the other original cast members. After Landau left the series, he was replaced by Leonard Nimoy, who had finished playing Spock in another well-known Desilu Studio show. Nimoy played The Great Paris, who like Hand, was a master of disguise. When Bain left the series, she was replaced by a succession of female leads including Leslie Ann Warren and Lynda Day George. But through the rest of the series it was Graves as Jim Phelps who selected the members of his team at the opening of each show and accepted each mission with the knowledge that should any of his IM Force members be caught or killed, the Secretary would disavow any knowledge of their actions. Graves reprised his role as Phelps on an Australian remake of the TV series for a couple of years in the early 1980s, following the tragic death of series creator Bruce Geller in a plane crash. Around the same time he starred in two of the immensely popular "Airplane" movies in which he played Captain Clarence Oveur, a pilot who seemed to have a questionable attraction to young boys ("Joey, do you like movies about gladiators?"). More recently he became the voice of Biography on the A&E Cable Network and did several self-deprecating roles on Mystery Science Theatre 3000. He was featured for several years in the role of Colonel John Camden on the WB Network's "7th Heaven" series. Graves was featured in Otto Preminger's 1953 movie "Stalag 17," in which he was eventually outed as the Nazi spy planted to prevent P.O.W.s from escaping (sorry if I spoiled the movie for those that hadn't seen it). It was only this past October that Graves received his well-deserved star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Reports say he was returning from a restaurant with one of his daughters celebrating what would have been his 84th birthday in four more days when he collapsed in front of his Hollywood home from an apparent heart attack. Graves's rugged good looks and prematurely gray hair made him a standout on the small screen. He received a Golden Globe statuette in 1971 for his iconic role on TV, but never picked up an Emmy, no doubt because the character development on "Mission: Impossible" was specifically kept to a minimum as part of its rapid-fire and action-oriented scripts punctuated by a running soundtrack designed to heighten viewer tension.

Congratulations to the planners of the first annual New Orleans Limmudfest, a two-day event that began Saturday night, but mostly centered on Sunday's all-day schedule of learning sessions on a variety of topics of interest to the Jewish community. Titled "Learning and Lagniapped," a keystone to the program is its commitment to diversity. New Orleans is the 46th city in the world permitted to hold a Limmudfest, which originated in the United Kingdom several years ago. New Orleans follows similar Limmud (Hebrew for "learning") events held in the U.S. in New York, Philadelphia, Los Angleles, Atlanta and Denver and is by far the smallest community sanctioned to hold a festival by Limmud International.

The opera that wasn't

As I prepared for the weekend, I talked with my mother in advance. She had reminded me that we had an opera coming up on Friday night. Sometime since college I have been an aficionado of the opera. It was a musical taste that developed slowly, but I have become more and more enamored of it as the years have passed. It is interesting that much of my opera collection was housed upstairs and was not affected by the swirling floodwaters that followed Hurricane Katrina and decimated most of my record and CD collection. So, most of my opera collection survives even today. I was rather looking forward to "The Flying Dutchman," ("Die fligende Holländer") Richard Wagner's monumental work of the ghost ship that returns to port while sailing the ship for eternity until doomsday. It is one of Wagner's most approachable works and stands on its own unlike many of the operas that make up the Ring cycle or long-winded pieces like Die Meistersinger von Nurenbürg that ramble on for hours. The New Orleans Opera Association has long presented memorable performances of Wagnerian operas, but hasn't attempted to stage anything as grand since the recovery from the 2005 storm and related flooding. Imagine my chagrin when a friend of mine informed me that the opera was next week. I called my mother and couldn't reach her by telephone, so I left word on her voicemail to check what the tickets read. You guessed it. The opera is next Friday, not tonight. I guess it really doesn't matter, but I wish it was tonight. I had such great expectations for the production and now I have to wait that much longer to hear the fat lady sing.

Domestic affairs and entanglements

Well, it had to happen. The final word in the David Letterman extortion case came in yesterday and the word was "guilty." Former CBS producer Robert "Joe" Halderman admitted in open court that his so-called treatment for a movie and a possible book was, as Letterman had stated publicly, a thinly-veiled attempt to wrest millions of dollars from the "Late Nite" talk show host. In the end Halderman admitted his role in the scheme, accepted a six-month prison sentence and four and a half-year period of probation and will be forced to provide 1,000 hours of community service in restitution. For Halderman it was the best of all possible outcomes because he would have undoubtedly been found guilty by the court and could have served a decade of hard prison time over this incredibly stupid act. Letterman, who contacted New York police over the matter, took his share of licks in the process. He publicly addressed the issue on his October 1 show, admitting he "had sex with women who worked" on his show in various capacities, but claiming the he had not cheated on his wife nor had any affairs following his marriage to Regina Lasko. The apology to his staffers was awkward enough for the comedian, but having to admit to being a womanizer to the public ramped up what he himself called his "creep" factor. Letterman, who had been linked romantically for a decade with former staffer and head writer Merrill Markoe, had hooked up for a short time with Stephanie Birkitt, who later became Halderman's live-in love interest. She reportedly moved out in August of last year. Halderman, an award-winning producer (seven Emmy Awards and an Alfred du Pont Columbia School of Journalism Award recipient) had devised his scheme between the time Birkitt moved out and last September, when he initially contacted Letterman and put his plan forward. Halderman's career, which included a long-term stint in London and work with the Winter Olympic Games XVIII, has now been suspended and it is doubtful he will be able to work in TV production in the future. He has been forbidden to speak out about the plot and cannot enter into any contracts in which he would reap profits such as a book or movie deal. The unsung victims from this tragic affair may be Halderman's divorced wife and two sons, who will probably lose child and spousal support payments while Halderman decides what course the rest of his life will take while imprisoned. Had the case gone to trial, it might have gone very bad for Letterman too, who might have had to admit just how many women literally worked under him. Frankly, it seems to me that Letterman, who named his production company Worldwide Pants, might well have been well advised to have kept his own on.

My eulogy

The following is a transcript of the eulogy I delivered March 6, 2010 at Temple Sinai for my brother-in-law, the late Russell George Feran. The picture above was taken a little over a year ago at the rehearsal dinner for his daughter's wedding to Gary Cohen of Chicago.

I was asked by Phyllis and Leslie to say a few words about Russell, my brother-in-law for nearly the past quarter century. This is a somewhat daunting task, because as I interviewed some of his other relatives and close circle of family and friends, I found one inescapable fact: that Russell has always been a bit mysterious. He definitely marched to the beat of his own drum and was, in part, a conundrum wrapped in a veil of inscrutability. Russell had quite a number of acquaintances and business contacts, but it seemed to me Russell made his way through life by following his own dictates. He had keen insight about business and he always knew what he should do to best provide for his family, but he never shirked hard work, toiling for long hours and without fanfare. The Radio Shack franchise he maintained from 1974 through 1987 was very successful and he amassed a sizeable portfolio of Tandy Corporation stock in the process. When I first met him, prior to my marriage to Sally, I found him to be a very likeable fellow with some very strong opinions about many things: politics and religion in particular, but also certain people. He could quote chapter and verse about why he liked or disliked certain things and few could ever dissuade him from speaking his mind. Most of what he had to say rang true. Knowing the horrors his father and mother faced during the Shoah, he had little patience for Nazi sympathizers and anti-Semites. Like a latter-day Renaissance man, he was always keeping his mind focused on things that interested him. He admired many different objects d’art and several graced his West Bank residence, but, most particularly, he was drawn to new technology. Russell was responsible for me buying my very first personal computer, but believe it or not, it didn’t come from Radio Shack. It was part of a deal. Russell was always working deals. As it turned out, a lady expressed an interest in getting an affordable computer system for her brother, a student just entering Loyola University. At that time to get a hard drive with a color monitor was considered a very good deal. Russell found a Magnavox system with a hard drive and color monitor on sale at D.H. Holmes. The cost was $600, so Russell bought two: one for himself and one for the lady’s brother. But then, she turned him down because it didn’t exactly meet her brother’s needs to support spreadsheets. That was when he called me on the phone. “Have I got a computer for you,” he said like the true salesman he was. He was right. It was a good deal, but it was not without its challenges, which I shall attempt to explain to you. Although it worked on DOS (that’s the disk operating system from Microsoft), it lacked enough RAM (that’s random access memory), to enable it to utilize a MODEM (named for the terms modulate and demodulate), which would allow me to access the Internet by telephone. After several additional hundreds of dollars of improvements, it finally did work. Thanks to Russell, I was surfing the Net in the early 1990’s with that computer, whose 762 Kilobytes of available hard drive space would be considered miniscule by today’s standards. Russell and I talked frequently about computing and many years later, when I became an expert on building and fixing them, I advised him and repaired or configured most of his personal computers. As a matter of fact, when I last talked to him a week ago today, he told me he was going to have me re-configure his laptop once he got back home. Prior to his work with Tandy Corporation, Russell had long been an avid amateur radio operator, what some of us uninformed outsiders would colloquially refer to as HAM radio. He eventually amassed an incredible collection of short wave and amateur radios along with an antenna array that was the envy of many of his fellow operators. W5RGF was Russell’s vanity call sign assigned by the FCC, which incorporated his initials. He used that for his e-mail address on AOL and even went so far as to obtain a Louisiana vanity license plate to display on his fire engine red Mazda sports coupe. Again, it was one of the many things that interested Russell – a car he would unfortunately drive just a few times due to the return of his Crohn’s disease. Some might ascribe his purchase of the Mazda to a mid-life crisis, but he truly loved that car and what it represented: status, freedom and in his own way a kind of sexiness he lacked in his other vehicles. I recall him picking me up one day at my record store and offering me a ride, which I eagerly accepted. It was one of those special times when he shared one of his interests with me. As the car careened through the streets, the roar of the engine reached a high pitch and I saw him skillfully working the clutch and the gearshift as he moved it from first gear all the way to fifth. As I held on at times for dear life, he flashed a slight hint of a smile. He was simply having fun. Many of you know Russell was an avid philatelist. Again, it was an area that interested him greatly. He rarely opened up to share with me some of his more valuable stamp collecting finds, but that was okay with me. When he wanted to share, he did. Russell was a lifetime member of the American Philatelic Society and the president of both the Westside Amateur Radio Club and the Label Katz Lodge of B’nai Brith. He was especially interested in being a member of B’nai Brith and actively recruited me to join that body, if not for anything else, than for the excellent medical insurance they afforded members. When I had emergency surgery due to a double inguinal and femoral incarcerated hernia in 1985, I found out that my wife’s health insurance had not been properly extended to cover me as her new husband. Because of Russell looking out for me, a B’nai Brith policy underwritten by Mutual of New York was literally in my mailbox that very afternoon when I needed it most.Unfortunately, Russell became quite the authority on health insurance and the high cost of hospitals and nursing home care over the course of the last thirty years. Following the initial incidence of Crohn’s disease and two surgeries from 1970 to 1978, he was essentially free of any outbreaks until 1992. That was the time when Russell thrived as a Radio Shack franchisee with his West Bank store. When he sold the franchise back to Tandy in 1987, he was set to embark on a different kind of business, RGF Enterprises. RGF Enterprises was an interesting opportunity for Russell. Allied with various first responder charities, his employees made telephone solicitations on behalf of a number of benevolent organizations across the country. The business, which utilized telephone trunk technology and allowed long distance calls to be made as local calls from New Orleans, flourished for a time until his disease returned and eventually the more important aspects of his health forced him to turn the business over to his manager. Throughout the time my wife Sally was alive, she and Russell had an interesting relationship. Like many, her fun-loving nature drew admirers like bees to honey. It might have been the case of her irresistible force that initially drew him to the Sobel family. Their friendship grew stronger and closer with Russell personally helping her refinance her beauty salon business in 1988, because he thought it was the right thing to do. But if he enjoyed Sally’s company, early on, he used that friendship to get to know Phyllis better. He admitted, he fell in love with Phyllis and used his friendship with her sister as a ruse in order to court her. As he proudly told his daughter not so long ago, “she’s the most beautiful woman in the world.” Throughout their marriage, Phyllis and Russell had many wonderful times, especially when they could travel together. True, they did have their occasional bumps in the road, like all married couples, but there was no doubt he was ever devoted to her. Throughout his medical ordeal, Phyllis stood by his side, insisting that only the best of professionals administer the finest medical science and care to her ailing husband. Russell went into crisis after crisis, especially in the last decade. Indeed, he always seemed to come out of the worst situations a little shaken, but still defiant as always. Although he didn’t always express himself with words of tenderness and affection, Russell truly loved his bride and for those of us who knew the couple in better days, the foundation of commitment they had to each other was unshakeable. Likewise, if there were a special jewel in his life, it could only be his beautiful daughter Leslie. I watched as the flower girl at my own wedding in 1984 grew up into a beautiful young woman and how her father viewed her with great pride. I saw that expressed again in his twinkling eyes last year when, weak and feeble, Russell attended Leslie and Gary’s wedding. He beamed with joy, especially at the rehearsal dinner at Antoine’s the night before when he seemed to be having the time of his life. I am certain that Russell was delighted in Leslie’s choice for his son-in-law and I am sorry that Gary didn’t get to know Russell better when he was in more robust health. Beside Phyllis and Leslie, Russell truly loved all of his other family members including his mother and father, Jean and Fred, and his sister Maureen and her husband Bob and their children. I can well attest that the dynamic between a brother and sister can be fraught with tension and competition. Maureen and Russell had their sibling rivalry moments, but their attachment to one another has also been lasting and the Freedlands ability to care for the older infirm Ferans in La Crosse, Wisconsin in the years since Hurricane Katrina was especially appreciated by Russell, who knew he was unable to do so. When he departed this world on March 4, it was only four days after his father Fred was laid to rest and, ironically, on the very day that his father-in-law was to celebrate his 94th birthday. Perhaps it was Russell’s way; his inimitable sense of timing, because from now on the date of March 4 will be forever known as a day of sadness, a day when a good and resolute man beset with a profusion of health issues had his final release to the dismay of his closest family and friends. We will all miss his indomitable spirit and his enormous heart. It was Russell’s tremendous heart that kept on beating throughout every medical crisis he endured, even when his other organs were no longer functioning well. He was a great friend, a tremendous brother-in-law and a kind uncle to my son and his other nephews and nieces. I am indebted to him for his support of my efforts with the Boy Scouts of America and I recall how we talked several times about the annual Jamboree on the Air when Scouts use amateur radio bands to communicate with one another around the world, an event in which Cantor Colman has taken part. And so, W5RGF, it is with a heavy heart that we bid you a fond adieu...a 73... on this your final signoff. And with respect and reverence we say to you... over and out.

Russell, Molly and me

It's been a very trying week for my extended family and for me. Some of it I'm still trying to process, I must admit. It's been said, there is a greater purpose to life than we mere mortals can intuit. We know we are all destined to die from the time we can understand the concept. Yet many of us deny the undeniable even when the spectre of death looms large and we face our own demise with a sense of dread that is all too brief. We then move on because to be absorbed with death and dying would be unproductive and could be seen (in as polite a way that can be expressed) as being largely egocentric. With an ironic sense of timing my brother-in-law, Russell Feran, passed away on Wednesday, only a few days after his nonagenarian father was buried here last Sunday. For the members of Russell's family it means an end to his suffering from Crohn's disease that first surfaced in 1970. With treatment and care he was free from any intrusion of Crohn's from 1978 until 1992, but as the doctors remind us, there is no cure for Crohn's disease. Often it can recur with no warning and its effects can be extremely debilitating. Russell's final bout with the disease began in 1992 and eventually led to years of nursing home care and numerous trips to various hospitals as his organs eventually shut down, kidneys first and finally his liver. I spoke with him in his hospital room just a few minutes after leaving his father's funeral last weekend. He was cogent and his mind as sharp as ever. When I returned to visit him two days later it was a different story. By then he was on pain medication and sedated to the point where he was not lucid. It was apparent he was in the last stages of his suffering, shriveled into a fetal position and striving to be comfortable as he fought as best he could the onset of his final release. We had been prepared for his transfer to hospice, but it became apparent that he was much too weak to even consider such a move. I would like to think that his last few days were mitigated by the pain medication, but it seemed he was quite uncomfortable and almost manic in the way he shook violently, touching his head and mumbling verbage that made no sense to onlookers. If there was one thing that kept him going throughout his ordeal, it was his strong heart, a heart that kept on beating as he addressed each medical setback through the last 18 years. At the same time as my brother-in-law's demise, I received word that Molly, a mixed breed dog my girlfriend owned had also peacefully passed away in her sleep. Molly was 12 years old and so it was understandable she would die sooner than later. Yet, my relationship with this sweet raven- and white-haired, part-border collie stretched over six years. She was in Winston-Salem, North Carolina when I first espied her, a spirited escape artist, who showed her incredible breakneck speed once she found her freedom. There were few fences she didn't climb over or under and few gates she was unable to squeeze by. When she was in Cleveland, I ended up walking her during snowfalls and rainfalls and I looked forward to many of these constitutionals even if it meant my having to pick up after her. She enjoyed her time in New Orleans too, although she was slowing down in these last few weeks. Recently diagnosed with congestive heart failure, Molly took her medicine religiously and seemed to be back in good health. Apparently, she didn't suffer any ill effects and simply didn't wake up last Wednesday morning. I know I will miss her sweet and charming character and the fact she is gone seems hard to fathom. It's a sad fact that the loss of both of these relationships will continue to reverberate in my life for some time to come. Rest in peace, Russell and to you, too, Molly.

Marching on

The adage about March coming in like a lion has been particularly apt these past few days. Heavy sustained winds and plummeting temperatures have accompanied uncharacteristically grey days. As grey as the skies may be, a sense of dread has also been present. This is due in no small part to the recent passing of one of my extended family (see February 28's blog "In the midst of joy there is pain") as well as the concurrent health crisis of his son, my brother-in-law Russell. Russell is very sick; make no mistake about that. He has fought a long battle with Crohn's disease, a malady that attacks an unusually large number of Jewish men of Ashkenazic (central and East European) heritage. Crohn's disease is an inflammatory affliction of the lower bowel that starts with pain and diarrhea, but can, if untreated, lead to debilitating and life-threatening consequences. There is no cure for Crohn's, but there are treatments that can lead it into remission. It is truly ironic that my other brother-in-law has also suffered from Crohn's. In both cases it manifested in them as young men and, after one episode, essentially vanished for decades. Then, without warning they were each suddenly and horribly stricken again with debilitating intestinal pain. Luckily, my other brother-in-law had a recurrence last year that was found to have been caused by aspirin therapy to prevent heart disease. He has recovered completely. That has not been the case with Russell. The disease has progressed over the past decade in a sinister fashion. Prior to Hurricane Katrina he endured several corrective surgeries and only with the grace of God survived. He was confined to a hospital bed in his home and was constantly connected to intravenous feeds for his sustenance. Since the storm he has been cared for in hospital facilities outside of the city and eventually returned to New Orleans when health services were restored. More recently he has been confined to a nursing home with a host of other problems including renal failure. He has made several trips to the hospital over the course of the last decade. His ability to undergo kidney dialysis has been compromised lately because he has been put on pain medication. The two are incompatible and unless he goes off the drip for pain, he cannot undergo dialysis. Now it appears his liver functionality has also been greatly diminished. Russell has moved back and forth into consciousness, appears jaundiced and is about to be moved to hospice care for short term care for what is considered a terminal case. With the recent passing of his father from Alzheimer's disease, family members are reeling. We are hoping for the best, but knowing that little can be done other than to wait for the inevitable. This is an insidious disease that robs young people of their lives and makes living an intolerable and almost unendurable ordeal. Oftentimes surgery results in having to live with the ramifications from one or more colostomies and, when the bowel becomes even more diseased, fissures can occur, which must be drained. Americans with Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis are at a much higher risk for contracting colorectal cancer. For more information check out the Crohn's and Colitis Foundation of America.

In the midst of joy, there is pain

How ironic that today is a day both of celebration and mourning. It is not only my birthday, but also the Jewish holiday of Purim, considered the most joyous on the Hebrew calendar. While my birthday is but a minor cause for celebration, Purim is a major cause for revelry and raucous behavior. It is mandated that everyone must give to charity, donate food items to friends and listen to the reading of the Book of Esther, the scroll which recalls the struggle of the Persian Jews who had been marked for destruction. The Persian queen Esther, also known as Hadassah to the Jewish people, is a pivotal character in the story. It is through her supplication to the king on behalf of her people that the evil Haman and his sons and henchmen are killed in the place of the Jews and her cousin Mordechai is raised up and given the rank of counselor to the king. Much of the public reading of the scroll, also called a megillah, involves drinking so that the names of Mordechai and Haman are not easily distinguished one from the other. Groggers or other devices for noisemaking are used to mark the mention of the villain's name and children in particular delight in being allowed to act out in synagogue while the scroll is read. The Purim scroll is a lengthy one, usually requiring a period of about 45 minutes to read from beginning to end. Because the wording is particularly intricate, abstruse and complicated, many people referred to having heard "the whole megillah," an expression that has taken on the somewhat negative meaning of dealing with a long, rambling act. Some might recall the animated Hanna-Barbera TV character Magilla Gorilla (seen above), a tongue-in-cheek misspelling for a Saturday morning cartoon show that had nothing to do with its star save the fact it rhymed with gorilla. I suspect it was the work of a Jewish writer with a wry sense of humor who came up with that ditty and convinced studio heads William Hanna and Joseph Barbera, neither of whom were Jewish, to go with that name to market the toy figures they hoped to sell when their show hit the airwaves (the show's sponsor was Ideal Toys). In any event, Purim has always been a day to celebrate the redemption of the Persian Jews and the capricious nature of life. The date of the 14th of Adar was the arbitrary date selected by purim (lots) on which all of the Persian Jews were marked for death. Jews in walled cities like Jerusalem celebrate it on the 15th of Adar. Instead, it turned out to be the day when Haman, his sons and other cronies were dispatched. The volatility of life is therefore to be celebrated. That leads me to the reason for mourning. Today is also the day that I say goodbye to a member of my extended family. My brother-in-law's father passed away in La Crosse, Wisconsin on Friday. At 92, Fred Feran lived a long life by anyone's figuring. Yet, like the Persian Jews who might have all perished were it not for a change in politics, Fred survived despite the threat from without in his native Slovakia. Born during the waning days of World War I, Feran, whose surname was at first Feuermann, grew up in turbulent times. The threat of Nazism reared its head when he was but a teenager and he and his brother Erwin fled their homeland in search of the Jewish homeland, then the British protectorate known as Palestine. As the inevitable war approached, the two brothers spent four months at sea aboard an illegal Greek ship trying to convince British authorities they should be allowed entry into the country. Finally granted permission, Feran worked as an engineer in the vital oil industry and later enlisted in the Czechoslovakian Overseas Army in Jerusalem and England during World War II. After the war ended, he was posted to Brazil, where he met his future wife Jean (Jirina), also a Czechoslovakian émigré and Holocaust survivor. The two eventually settled in New Orleans, where Fred and Jean adopted their Americanized names and he became a skilled clockmaker, working for a cousin who owned a jewelry store. Feran was so noted an artisan that huge grandfather clocks and other intricate time-keeping mechanisms were regularly shipped to and from his shop. His two children, Russell and Maureen, married and had children of their own. The Ferans became active in the New Americans Club, an organization of Holocaust survivors who had embarked on new lives in New Orleans. After retiring, Feran began to slowly lose his mental faculties due to Alzheimer's Disease and the condition was only worsened after he and his wife were forced to relocate due to the loss of their home during the time following Hurricane Katrina. Living out his remaining days in La Crosse seems unfortunate for a man whose life symbolizes struggle and overcoming the odds. Today Fred comes home to be buried and I will be present at that funeral and celebrate a life well spent, but a life that might well have been different had the times he lived under not been as trepidatious and threatening. Those who have been touched by Fred's story might want to consider a donation to the Maureen and Robert Freedland Fund for Shoah Studies of the La Crosse Public Education Foundation founded by both Ferans and named for their daughter and their son-in-law, who will administer the funds. The address is P.O. Box 1811, La Crosse, Wisconsin 54602-1811. Such a gift would be in keeping with the spirit of the holiday where giving to charity is encouraged and I would personally regard note of such bequests as among the best presents I could ever receive on my birthday. Chag Purim!