Harry Blustein

These are the two eulogies given:

Richard Blustein:

Harry was a great father. He had a wonderful wife Janet , 2 proud children David and Richard , 1 loving daughter in law Susan and 4 loving grandchildren, Carly, Larissa, Lisa, and Michelle.

He was very proud of his 20 year military background which included 3 years in the US Marines during World War 2. His greatest moment in retired life was to visit a military base and to spend time with his family.

We will all miss him and hope that he is remembered forever by those who came into contact with him.

David Blustein:

There is so much to be said about our father, Harry Blustein; it is impossible to know where to begin and how much to convey to you.  First, I would like to thank each of you for attending this solemn event.  I speak on behalf of my beloved mother, dear brother, his wonderful family, and my daughters, Larissa and Michelle, in expressing our deepest appreciation for each of you for making this important day memorable for all of us.  Second, I would like to thank my brother who has worked so hard in caring for my parents; in many ways, his contributions have been immeasurable as he has lived closer to them during their final years. 

 

To speak about our father is one of the great privileges of my life.  In fact, I have been speaking about him for my entire life, with reverence, love, respect, and admiration.  My father and I spent many, many hours talking, especially in his final years about the various aspects of his life, his passions, and his love for his family.  In my remarks today, I will share some of the more unique aspects of our father:

 

Our father was one of the few people who I have met who loved unconditionally.  Despite a rather painful and traumatic childhood, he bounced back with the sort of resilience that many of my colleagues in psychology spend their whole lives trying to understand.  To quote Bruce Springsteen, my father was the type of person who when people said to sit down, he stood up!

 

After spending his early years in the Boston area, my father moved to New Jersey and lived in his beloved Passaic.  He dropped out of high school to help his father work in the roofing and metal shop, but missed school, and returned to complete HS in 1933. It is useful to note that completing high school during the heart of the depression was akin to completing college now—what he demonstrated with this dedication to learning and to advancing himself is an attribute that my brother and I have modeled, and have benefitted from considerably.  After spending some uneventful time in the Civilian Conservation Corps, my father joined the US Marines, much to the shock and concern of his father.  His years in the Marines were formative and powerful for him.  In a sense, the Marine experience shaped my father, my brother and myself, and many of our cousins and family members gathered here. 

 

My understanding of my father’s time in the Marines is based on two observations.  First, our father essentially battled his own inner shyness and reticence by exposing himself to the toughest branch of the military.  In doing this, he taught me and many others important lessons about life.  One does not give in to one’s fears, but rather, one needs to be aware of these fears and have the courage and grace to push against them.  Second, my father learned first hand about the insidious nature of anti-Semitism.  It actually was not until the last 10-15 years of his life that he fully opened up to me how hateful many of his peers were and how he felt in the midst of such racism and discrimination.  One of the ways that my father battled anti-Semitism was to not back off from conflict.  While my brother and I often noted that our father probably lost way more battles than he won, he actually won an important victory for all of us.  No longer would we, as Jews, back down; no longer would be happy to receive second best in life.  I have often shared with my friends that before there were Israelis, there was my father.  His anger about anti-Semitism was real and was hard earned. Another important story here is that after World War II, my parents had gone to the Miami area where Eastern airlines was hiring a large staff for their fledging business.  My father applied for the job, took a test (which I am sure he did quite well on), and then was told to wait 48-72 hours to hear about the job.  He did not hear and, after a few days, went back to the personnel office.  He was told that Eastern airlines had already reached their quota on hiring his kind even though he did well on the exam and clearly had many years of relevant experience in aircraft maintenance in the military.  As it turned out, my father could not get a job with a national US airline until 1960!  Growing up with this knowledge of hatred based on completely irrelevant aspects of people’s lives certainly shaped my father and our family.  One of the things that I admired the most about my father was his fierce protection of his Jewish identity.  Here again, when people told him to sit down, he stood up—and he stood up for all of us, who grew up in the shadows of the Holocaust and generations of pernicious anti-Semitism.  Thanks to my father and many of his peers, we learned that we could stand among the nations of the world and that we could demand, and not request, respect and equity.

 

Another important set of attributes of my father’s personality was an integrative blend of love, curiosity, and strength.  His love was expressed with great openness, humility, and with lack of condition.  I will never forget a moment in high school when I was inducted into an academic honor society.  My father and mother could not attend the ceremony because of their jobs, but at the ceremony, which was attended by the parents of my peers, most of whom were far more affluent than our family, I noticed my father walking into the auditorium, still in his work clothes.  He would not miss this event, and showed up right from his job at Pan Am.  I have rarely felt as proud as I did that afternoon.

 

My father always was so warm and welcoming.  As a young boy, I used to feel bad that he had to work so hard, so when we lived in the Bronx, I recall waiting outside of our apartment for him to come home from JFK Airport.  When he saw me, he would come running over and pick me up.  These were incredibly special moments that helped to form the core of my being—loving and being loved were the most special gifts of being alive, and my father had the capacity to give and receive love in such a generous and caring way.

 

Another aspect of his love was his concern for the underdog.  I believe that this concern for those who have least has profoundly affected me in my career, as I will describe shortly.  I recall when we visited Florida in 1969, our dear Uncle Pete took my father, my brother and I to a boxing match.  My father was rooting for the underdog for most of the fight until the underdog started to win.  Once that occurred, he then switched sides, saying that he felt sorry for the guy who was losing. 

 

Our father also cared about the underdogs in our society, commenting with empathy about the hard lives of the poor, infirmed, mentally ill, and others who lived outside of the American Dream. One of the most impressive things about our father is that he waited on line for 2 hours in 2004 to try to elect John Kerry—the true war hero who tried hard to defeat the Bush administration.   

 

However, the most intense love that he shared was with my mother—his beloved Jeanette.  My father worshiped the ground that my mother walked on.  From my parents, I learned what a truly healthy, respectful, and caring marriage is about.  My parents appreciated each other’s strengths, and tolerated each other’s foibles with grace and understanding.  They understood that a good relationship is based on admiration, trust, and love.  His love of my mother is something that I will never forget.  This love has been returned immeasurably by my mother, who has sacrificed so much of her life, especially in the past few years, to caring for our father.  As any of you know who visited the nursing home, this was not a pleasant place to spend a few hours and my mother did this multiple times a week for years.  We owe my dear mother a great debt for ensuring that my father’s final years were graced with care and with love.  I feel incredibly lucky and blessed to have grown up in a family with so much love and kindness.  My father worked so hard to create a great life for my mom, my brother and myself.  We never really went without anything in our lives.  While we lived modestly, we never felt deprived.  My father translated his love into hard work and provided even when times were lean. 

 

My father also had an insatiable curiosity about life.  When I went to college, I used to come home and tell him about my courses and my life away at school.  He listened with such attentiveness; he then asked me to bring home my books and he would then read as many of them as he could manage, given his interests and the demands of his job.  In addition, my father started to read the more abstract books that my brother and I were reading in the 1960s and 1970s, including the work of JR Tolkein, Kurt Vonnegut, Hermann Hesse and others.  He was an intellectual in his core and he would have loved a life of the mind, if that option existed for him.  After his retirement from Pan Am, he used to travel to NYC from my parent’s apartment in Queens to visit the wonderful museums; at that point, I think he really was able to drink in the benefits of living in the cultural capital of the US. Of course, one of the greatest aspects of my parent’s lives was the ability they had to travel around the world—because of our father’s flight benefits, they were able to travel across the US, Europe, Israel, and the Caribbean.  To think that our father from his modest background in the Jewish orphanage and Passaic visited Rome, Paris, London, and Jerusalem is a great comfort during this time of loss and grieving.  Our father, for the most part, had a wonderful life.  He was able to marry a woman he loved; he worked at a trade that he was skilled in, worked in an industry he loved, and raised two very caring children who never forgot their parent’s sacrifices for them.

 

My father was blessed with a long life and a relatively healthy life, until his final years.  During his retirement, he was able to enjoy time writing, exercising, and going with my mother on endless, and I might add, very boring, trips to the mall.  He also enjoyed his grand children and was able to take pride as my brother and I pursued careers that reflected a degree of achievement that was only a dim dream in the depression.  He also had a chance to return to Florida and live near his siblings, who were so essential in his growing up years.  He was, at heart, a family man—a man who loved to enjoy his wife, children, and the peace of good physical and emotional health.  His final years, of course were terrible, and were spent in the haze of dementia.  However, let’s remember this great man who lived nearly a full century with the big picture of his grand life.  His early years in Boston, the years of rebuilding of the Blustein family in Passaic, the gallant years in service of the US, especially in World War II when he and his peers protected us from the tyranny of fascism, and his years at work, caring for his family and working hard at his craft.  Let us remember this great man with his laughter, his stories about his wilder years in the service, and his great passion for his wife.  And, let us remember this wonderful man in all of the faces of those who have less and who have struggled to make their lives better; let us remember him when we see a working man coming home with his or her hands all cut up from working in a dangerous job all day; let us remember our father when we see the brutal hand of racism and discrimination that continues to plague our world, and let us remember this man when we see people bounce back from adversity.  What I would like to do is to ask each of you to find some way in your life to make my father’s life meaningful for you and others.  For me, my father and mother live passionately in my work, which is dedicated to the poor and working class.  I ask each of you to draw some strength from my father in your life and to remember him in this world.  To paraphrase the Jesuits, who I work with at Boston College, let us take my father’s memory and set the world on fire.

 

Born: Jul 23, 1913 in Malden, Mass.

Died: Jan 21, 2008 in Largo, Florida

About: US Marine 1943-1946 US Air Force Reserve 1946-1965

Obituary

Obituary from SPTimes
BLUSTEIN, Harry 94, of Largo passed away Jan. 21, 2008. Survived by his wife, Janet; sons, Richard and David. He was a WWII veteran and a proud member of the U.S. Marines.