Solomon Stein

By Evey Groothuis, Daughter
December 26, 2006

Dearest Dad,

After all these months of telling others about you, now it's your turn to listen.

Thank you for giving your children the greatest gift a parent can give: a life well-lived. You and Mom are perfect examples of lives lived with love, enthusiasm, curiosity, charity, honesty, humor and humility.

Thank you for being a realistic optimist and for having the strongest moral compass a person can have.

Thank you for not preaching to us or meddling, but for laying down the guidelines:

Obey the "Golden Rule"

Be quick to lend, but don't borrow:

When I bought my first car, a 1973 red Mustang convertible, you said: "How can you take out a car loan if you don't have the same amount of money in the bank — what if something happens to you?" Of course, I took the loan, but I was nervous!

"Early to bed, early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise"

Always do the right thing

Thank you for never expecting from others but always being appreciative.

Thank you for making all your relatives and Mom's relatives your friends.

Thank you for never forgetting anyone in times that were good or the times they were in need. Thank you for minimizing your problems but worrying about others' misfortune.

Thank you for laughing through your own jokes.

Thank you for loving music and your fiddle; for going with Judy to entertain the "senior citizens" nearly right up to your hospitalization.

Thank you for calling each of us on our birthdays and singing Happy Birthday accompanied by a recording of yourself playing it on the fiddle.

Thank you for getting everyone up at weddings and bar mitzvahs to dance the Miserlou so many decades ago. I remember the excitement everyone felt when you started: "There's Sol! It's time for the Miserlou." You called out the different variations and you and Mom danced in the middle of the circle to lead everyone.

Thank you for becoming a folk dance teacher's teacher; for loving photography and always carrying your camera; for documenting our family's lives and our friends' lives with your movies, then with your "still camera", and finally with your digital camera. Thank you for always making two prints of each picture and sending the copies to your subjects. How many people wouldn't have precious photographs if not for you?

Thank you for riding your bike to the food store or to Home Depot; for teaching me to ride and to drive; for saving the charcoal after a barbeque for the next one; for being able to fix anything — I told Rabbi Moskowitz the only tug-of-war Alan and I might have could be over your tools;

Thank you for singing "Tura, lura, lura" to me coming home on the train on Saturdays when I was little and I went to your office in New York with you; thank you for teaching me to sing, "Old Black Joe" for the Schlissel Family Circle Chanukah Party — I think Mommy was beside herself, but I stood up on the chair when Harold Raab came around to me and belted it out; the next year you taught me "Home on the Range" but I couldn't yodel like you did.

Thank you for your letters when I was away at camp or college — Mom wrote regularly, but when I got a letter from you in your distinctive handwriting, it was special because I knew you were working six days a week and had very little time;

Thank for your quick step and quick laugh; for the pleasure you got from life's most basic gifts. How many times did you tell me about the beauty of the sunset during a concert at Stepping Stone Park?

Thank you for the way you remembered Mom: for the annual celebrations of her life on January 7th. Invited relatives and friends gathered at a restaurant and at everyone's place was a poem and the picture of Mom you took on her 85th birthday. There were no tears then.

Thank you for the beer bottle filled with hot water at my feet during cold winter nights and for the fan blowing over the ice cube tray on hot summer nights before we had air conditioning. Thank you for roasting chestnuts on the stove in that old potato baker; and for making hot cocoa from scratch. Thank you for rolling out the dough and baking Mommy's rolled cookies after she passed. For growing your tomatoes and lettuce and zucchini. For loving to watch Sherlock Holmes mysteries and Lawrence Welk. For whistling while you were doing anything until trouble with your teeth took that pleasure away from you.

Thank you for learning and loving until the end.

When Mom was leaving us, Mickey Redlich came to the house and said to me, " I don't know how your father is going to go on; I never knew anyone who loved his wife the way your father loves your mother." So, thank you for learning to care deeply again after losing Mom; for having a full and happy life with Judy. Thank you for answering the phone with "Good morning" and for ending every call with "I love you."

Thank you for never walking away from a challenge until the decision was no longer yours.

After Mom passed, Aunt Toby said about their loving relationship, "We were different, but I understood her." I understood you, Dad.

And finally, thank you, Daddy: I am so proud to be my father's daughter.