We’re back from our trip to Brandeis for the memorial service for Barney Schwalberg, alav hashalom. It was a beautiful service and my short contribution went very well.

There were two distinct strains: the family, personal portion, and the Brandeis professor portion. The first speaker was a colleague of Barney’s at Brandeis for many years and then five former students, including me. Then family friends spoke, followed by his daughter and grandchildren.

The distinction between the two parts was summed up when his granddaughter Claire got up to speak. She is 22 and has just graduated from Smith with a degree in Geology. She is bright and adorable and has a lot of that young person swagger about her — comfortable in any environment. But when she started to speak, she couldn’t. She turned her head and gasped “I’m sorry.” Her mom and sister ran up and she composed herself. The first thing she said was “First of all, I don’t know any Professor Schwalberg. Where is that coming from?” He was a loving funny warm Grandpa to her, completely different from the picture we had just spent a good 45 minutes drawing. And the rest of the service was on how great a family man he was. Very beautiful to see. His daughter Renee seemed terrific. I had never met her before. Someone noted that Barney once said “I don’t know why people feel compelled to have more than one child — I have the perfect daughter.”

The first speaker was a Brandeis professor named Dolbear. I remember him from my time there, but did not take a course with him. He was reputed to be a “dull bear” and his speech did nothing to correct that. He rambled and was not very effective, given the incredible material he had at his disposal. But it did relax me a bit to watch him. Even if I bombed, it wouldn’t be worse. Then three former students spoke, all from periods later than me. They were all very good. Then I got up, and this is what I said:

I graduated from Brandeis with a degree in Economics in 1971.  I had Barney as my professor for three courses.  I did not know what to do next.  My dad and brother were doctors, so forget that.  My mom was a homemaker and my sister a psychologist.  All useless.  So I visited Barney in his office during my last semester. He said something like “a bright young man like yourself should consider law school.”  And that’s why I went to law school — but I’ve long ago forgiven him for that.  If he had suggested goat farming, I’d probably have a nice herd by now. After several miserable years as a lawyer, I joined the faculty of the accounting program at Hunter College in NY where I taught taxation and business law for 38 years. I encountered another great professor in law school, Bernard Wolfman, who steered me towards taxation.  In my tax class at Hunter I told a story about Professor Wolfman to my students and said that based on his class, I decided to go into tax.  So those were the two great influences in my life.  Back then at Hunter students filled out a course evaluation form each semester with the option to write something in addition to checking off boxes.  And to this day I remember what one young woman wrote about my class.  Clearly referring to my having mentioned that Prof Schwalberg steered me towards the law and Professor Wolfman towards taxation, she wrote:  Based on Professor Liveson’s class I have decided to become a nun.

But let’s get back to Barney’s class.  He needed to use a beautiful woman in an example one day, so he referred to Sophia Loren, the great beauty of her time.  But he called her Sophie, instead of Sophia.  And one kid in the back row yelled out “Sophie?”  And Barney, without missing a beat, said “Well, to her friends . . . ”  It was a great moment.  Skipping ahead about 45 years.  I had lost touch with Barney but I sent him a note sharing some good news about an award I received because I mentioned him in a short speech I made, and we started communicating by email. And in his very first message to me he asked if I remembered his Sophia Loren moment.  He was very proud of it.  Of course, I had.  A New Yorker article came out at that time by John McPhee about how each generation has its own set of icons.  I mentioned it to Barney and noted that if I had to use a beautiful woman in one of my classes I wouldn’t be able to use Sophie Loren, I’d probably use Taylor Swift.  And he wrote back:  “Who’s Taylor Swift?”

In Statistics, we studied the Poisson variable.  And Barney explained how it was used by the British in World War 2 regarding a missile the Germans developed.  They took a map of London and divided it into segments.  If the missile were not capable of being aimed with precision, the Poisson variable should predict how many segments had zero missile hits, how many had one hit, two hits, etc.  If it couldn’t be aimed with precision they wouldn’t have to waste resources moving or protecting specific valuable assets.  The variable matched up perfectly with the actual hits so they knew it could not be aimed precisely. 

When my son Sam was studying WW2 in high school I told him about the Poisson variable.  It fascinated him and he used it for his semester project, embellishing it with scenes of marching German soldiers and stuff like that.  I told Barney about it.  He was very pleased.

One last story.  Barney asked a question in class and called on Mr. Spechler who had raised his hand. His answer was wrong as Barney explained.  But Mr. Spechler insisted that he was right.  Barney again corrected him and explained again why he was wrong.  Mr. Spechler started a third time to make his case and finally Barney cut him off and said, “Mr. Spechler — don’t commit yourself too strongly to an absurd position.”

Words that all of us should live by.

As I look back over my own life, even though I spend every waking moment complaining about something or other, the truth is I’ve been very lucky.  Wonderful parents and siblings, a wonderful wife and children, seven incredible grandchildren, a career I fully enjoyed.  And I was so lucky to have Barney in my life.  Every one of his students was.  Every single one.  

Rest in peace, Barney.

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It went over very well. I knew right away that I was feeling comfortable and the big test was how the “nun” line would sell. It did well, so I was pretty much home from there.

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We stayed in Bedford, MA, in the Bedford Plaza and it was very comfortable. We were exhausted, so went to bed early, and thus missed seeing the Bosox drub the Yankees on TV. In the morning, the GPS lady’s first instruction was to turn on Shawsheen Road and I said, I think Bonnie and Mitch are buried here (my sister and bro-in-law). I remembered it was the Shawsheen Cemetery. In fact, it was right across the street and I miraculously managed to blunder our way to their graves for a nice visit.

We stopped in Holyoke on the way back and caught the first seven innings of a College Summer League game: the Valley Blue Sox vs. the Ocean State Waves. Very enjoyable. Attendance: 307 diehards. It was 2-2 when we left (worried about traffic), and we missed a lot. It went into extra innings. The Waves scored four in the top of the tenth, but the Sox plated five in the bottom! Yay!

Good to be home now, if a bit tired. See you tomorrow.

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