A Eulogy for Ed Hart

June 5, 2009
by Tim Hart

We have to stop meeting like this.

I’d like to start off by saying thanks to all those of you who took the time to come here today, and to those who made it last night to the wake. I know many of you made a long trip to say good-bye; fighting through a fireman’s parade to get there was something we didn’t bargain on.

I want to thank everyone who gave of themselves during dad’s illness. While it serves as testimony to who he was, it bears noting that it is also testimony to who you are.  I feel as if there are some who I have to mention. I apologize in advance to those I miss. It does not diminish your efforts or my fathers’ appreciation. Know that when reading my mother’s eulogy I inadvertently skipped entire lines, left out family members, so, assume you’re in here and I’m just a bad reader.

First I would like to thank the women of Careseekers, without whom we would not have been able to keep mom and dad in their home for as long as we did. Of particular note, Chriss and Olga, who went above and beyond. There are people who are hired to do a job and then there are people who come into your life who care; in you two we got the latter. We were fortunate enough to find some individuals in New Hampshire at Sunbridge who duplicated this caring involvement; namely Mark and Stephanie. You always seemed to be on duty, willing to field phone calls from a family member, to go in and make sure he was okay, comfortable, to alter the way he was being cared for as his situation changed. You all made my father’s last months better and put his family more at ease.

I would like to mention his friends, all of his friends, but if you look around you’ll see that is not possible. I’ll start with his neighbors here in Chappaqua. The constancy of the Hoffmans and the Alexanders – always nearby – was comforting. My father and all the members of his family thank you for your concern and caring. To Rory O’Neill, his longtime tennis partner, to David and Gayle, my parents often “dinner out” couple; know that your relationship went well beyond what happened on the court or at the table. 

To the Smiths, you feel like an extended arm of our family. How many of their photo albums are filled with you and yours. Whether vacationing at the beach, hot air ballooning or kayaking in Glacier Bay, you were always there, and my parents’ lives were the richer for it. Cheers. To Andrew Selesnick and the family at Horace Greeley, I thank you for honoring him by lowering the flag to half-mast and the memorabilia displayed in his honor. He would be very proud, embarrassed, but proud.

Of special note are a group of individuals I call the breakfast club: Larry Breen, Stan Tucci, Larry Christianson, Tom Annacone, Connie Geller, Alan Damon and Bob Borman. These last years, every Thursday they would meet at 9:00 a.m. at the Pleasantville Diner where they would solve the problems of the world. Surprisingly, new ones always cropped up by the following Thursday and they’d have to re-convene. 

As my father’s health diminished and he become confined to a wheelchair, they changed to the Mt. Kisco Diner – it has a ramp –but they continued to come by, now in pairs, so they could carry him and his wheelchair down the stairs to the waiting car. Later as his dementia progressed and he could no longer participate, they still involved him in the conversation, and now one of their duties would be to assist him in consuming his favorite breakfast: apple pie a la mode.  Joan would have been furious with you guys.

I am tempted to say that you cared for him while he was with you, but more appropriate might be that you cared, period. Your behavior mirrored one of the sayings my father lived by: “Focus on the ability, not the limitation.” You saw that my father still was capable of joy and did what was in your power to see that it was part of his life. Know that you could not have served the man or his spirit better. 

I’d like to share part of an email I received that seems appropriate here:

Your dad was such a large part of my dad’s life, both personally and professionally.  He was a “forever” friend with a huge, caring heart, a role model of sorts and truly he was what was good about public education. It was largely because of your father that my father’s years at Horace Greeley High School were so enjoyable. It was many a night that my dad would tell anecdotes about your dad. Boy, did he love working with him! In fact, I think calling it “work” was a misnomer!  As his daughter I am thankful for all that your father added to my dad’s life. I only hope that he was able to return the favor on some small scale. 

With much love, Kelley Breen.

Kelley, you needn’t worry. Your father owes mine no debt of love that has gone unpaid.

Lastly, I’d like to thank dad’s family, my family. Starting with the grand-kids: from Ian and Bridget who came to visit here and in New Hampshire, thank you for allowing your mother and father the room to help in what they needed to do. To Alexander and Macklin, thank you for your visits and your sacrifice in letting your mom travel to visit her father. I know how much you must have missed her. To Catherine, Marly and Shannon, the newest members of the family, thank you for visiting and for the support you’ve shown me in this. Your presence and voices helped to bring a ray of light into an often dark room.

 

To Mary Ann and Jimmy, dad would be very happy to see you sitting here. To Valerie, his sister and the Babeckis, know that your weekly calls to check up did as much to elevate my spirit as it ever could have done for yours. I’d like to acknowledge my sister Roxanne and husband Philip whose soft voices and tender touch were always a comfort to my dad. To Nancy and Jim who would arrive from North Carolina exhausted by the drive and get to work on a list of broken lamps, vacuum cleaners and dishwashers. Your efforts helped keep their house a home, a home with them in it. To Barbara and Joe thank you for trips to doctors, for replacing beds as needed, for fixing the bathroom. And Barbara for your efforts at pulling this together. 

To my wife, I thank you for letting me do what I’ve had to do, for allowing me grace on my household duties so I could be with my father. I have been doubly blessed in my life: first to have had the parents I’ve had, and second to have found you.

Finally I’d like to acknowledge my brother Chris, his wife Peggy and their three children, Danny, Molly and Sam, who selflessly took Ed into their home so that his final months could be in the presence of loved ones. 

I’d like to read a portion of an email from Tom Annacone, one of the breakfast boys, that describes better than I can how I feel about what you’ve done:

“I want you to know what heroes you have been in the eyes of all of us during this long and devastating period of your lives. You guys exemplify ‘family’ in the true sense of the word.  May your grief be short and your memories last forever.”

You should be proud. At peace. I know Dad is proud of you.

It is fitting that we gather here is this place where Trinity is so much of part of the belief. My father had a trinity, a different one, but no mistake, to him it was holy. His was made up of God, Family and Education. Unlike the Trinity celebrated here, his had no one at the top, it was a circle, each item somehow intermingled with the other, interchangeable.

How many of you who were his friends, co-workers, teachers heard him use the expression, “family comes first.” Last night at the wake, a woman who had been hired by my father told me that on her first day of the job, she needed to take a half day off to take her daughter to the doctor. Upon her return, she got called into my father’s office. She expected a lecture about what her duties were, her responsibilities. That’s exactly what she got. My father told her next time to remember she was a mother first and to take the whole day off so she could take her daughter to lunch and re-assure her. This was an attitude he extended to all those he worked with. Allowing people the room and freedom to attend to the illnesses of those they loved was not found in any manual, it was found in his heart.

It was also something he extended to the parents of the students at Horace Greeley High School. He would regularly arrive at school hours before it opened.  When I asked why, he said it was so that students who had been suspended could come in with their parents to have the required meeting eliminating that suspension without costing them a day of school. Any of you who saw him with his family knew this was more than just something he paid lip service to. The efforts of his children in taking care of him and my mother these last years serves as a legacy for the way he was with us.

There is a legal term that applies to how teachers and administrators are viewed with their students. It is, “in loco parentis.” It means in the place of the parents. It is meant as a legal designation, but for my father it was more. For him it meant that these children became, for a while, his, and he worried about and treated them with the care he would give his own. How many trips to parents’ homes for conferences, to games, to recitals would he make because one of his students had mentioned that their real parents couldn’t make it. How many trips to hospitals and courtrooms, unfortunately, all too frequently to funerals, did he make. 

When I started seeing Cathy, a former classmate, now my wife, I introduced her to my father. She told me she knew him well, that on the day her mother died it was he that came in and drove her home, kind, soft, gentle. I thank you for that, dad. It was a not unusual occurrence at the Hart house for my father to come home to his wife, my mother Joan, sitting impatiently at the table with two plates of now cold food. She would warm the food, reprimand him for working too hard, and return to sit and listen to the long day’s work.

Within his school there was a hierarchy. I’m not talking here about the administration. I am talking about my father’s hierarchy, which had one rule: The students come first. He was a man who was willing to listen to the problems of the teachers, but less willing to afford it a priority unless it dealt with improving the situation for the students. When one of his teachers went on a rant about the misbehavior of one of his students it was often met with the request, “Talk to me about forgiveness.” So frequently was this phrase heard that when he retired and he was roasted at the public library, the teacher who portrayed him in the skits, his every other sentence was, “talk to me about forgiveness.” 

Last night at the wake Jan Bushy told me that her interview to be vice principal consisted of one question, “Talk to me about forgiveness.”  When I asked my father about it, he said it was his favorite interview questions for prospective teachers because it showed him whether or not a candidate was able to confer it, not only to students, but to the well-meaning, often overboard, parents of students.  They must also be able to forgive colleagues for any real or imagined slights in order for the school to be able to work as well as it should. 

You see, to my father, a school is an organic unit. It lives and breathes. But just as the body requires all its elements to be healthy and working, so does the school require each element to succeed. There are no small jobs. No unimportant people. Finally, there was the need to be able to forgive oneself, something that enabled the teacher to move on from mistakes, to improve rather than dwell on an error.

This quality, particularly in dealing with parents, was evident to me during the year of 1969. That was the year of Woodstock, of political unrest, of Vietnam. It was also the year of Seminar Week, when my father allowed the curriculum to be driven by the students without any censorship. Amongst the groups invited were the Black Panthers, the SDS, the John Birch Society, the Communist Party and The Gay Liberation Front. It was as if the front page of “The New York Times” walked through the door. Amazing.

Many in our little community were outraged. But my father was not to be swayed. He not only allowed the divergent groups to come, he relished their presence. The school was a place to learn. This community, a place he lived in for 45 years, a place he loved, was an insular monochromatic place, a kind of upper class ghetto that limited student contact with the world just outside its borders. Seminar Week broke those walls down. Needless to say our phone rang non-stop as late as three in the morning, with concerned, often irate, parents letting the then non-tenured principal know what they thought of his methods. 

I was young then, barely 15, but I rose to my father’s defense trying to limit the onslaught. I would rush to answer the phone, often letting out a stream of well-selected four letter words to let the person on the other end know just what they could do with their opinion. My father caught me at it and sat me down. He told me to stop. I didn’t understand, what was happening to him was wrong. My father said it was okay. These people just cared about their children, just like he cared about us. He thought that was wonderful. Why would he want to stop an expression of their caring? It was more important that he try to explain to them his position than to stop their complaints. In that way they might understand that they were on the same side, they weren’t opponents.

He had a manner that served him well in creating converts out of angry parents. How many of you can recall either entering a room or being present when someone entered in a panic over some insurmountable problem with their child, themselves, a co-worker and watch as he listened and let their tale spin itself out, then heard him say, “How can I help?” or, “What can I do to make this better?” 

His close friend Larry Breen, whenever I ask a favor of him, has a similar mantra. His is: “If you love me baby, use me.” It is no wonder that these two men worked together so well for so long. Tom Annacone told me. “Your dad was a great boss. He was one of the few who, when you entered a room with a disagreement, you went in knowing that the listener listened and that he might come around. It didn’t happen often but it happened.”

When I was young, many of the lessons I learned were taught with the use of little axioms, aphorisms to meet the occasion, “It’s not the size of the dog in the fight, it’s the size of the fight in the dog.” “When the going gets tough, the tough get going.” “Crisis is another name for opportunity.” Later, he taught me how to live by what he did; teaching me that people cared about what they did something about, to trust what people did and to let what they said go.

I remember, I was about 12, the family was going camping. We traveled into the back streets of Philly to buy a tent. The whole family was in the car – all 7 of us.  It was dark, rainy. We got to the warehouse; my father got out and stood on the loading dock and joked with a couple of the men who worked there. 

Across the street, I saw a man who was laying down in the gutter; today, he would be called homeless, back then he was a bum.  The men standing with my father started to point, to laugh.  I saw them, and the man, and my father. I wondered what he, who had taken me to church where I listened to “love thy neighbor as thyself” and “[to] do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” would do, but not for long. He jumped down, walked across the street in the rain, picked the man up in his arms and carried him into a doorway out of the rain. He returned, jumped back up on the loading dock where the situation had dramatically changed. He was no longer one with the workers there. They stood apart from him, rejected him and what he had done. But, it was all I could do to not explode in pride. What he did was a small thing. What it taught me was not: that people, all people, matter. He said to me, “Nobody says, ‘I want to be a junkie when I grow up.’ And no parent wishes that for their child - sometimes it happens.” People matter, all people.

Years later, when I was a man, and home visiting, I reminded him of the day. I told him that story from my perspective, how proud of him I was. I will never forget his response. He said, “Funny how you mention that day. I’ve thought of it often myself. You remember it because you’re proud of what I did. I remember it because I’m ashamed I didn’t do enough.”

Good man.

Few people in their lives are fortunate enough to meet their heroes. I ate dinner with mine every night. To a young boy so blessed, no one could be better than my dad. I held this belief so firmly that when the book To Kill a Mockingbird came out in 1960, I was convinced that Harper Lee had modeled the character of Atticus Finch after my dad. Surely she must have met him. “You’ve got to walk around in another man’s shoes for a while before you know him,” was something he would say. As I’ve grown older, I realize this was not the case, but I do think they would have gotten along just fine.

He was one of the lucky few who realized how truly blessed you are when called upon to serve; that challenge is another word for opportunity; that you should embrace your difficulties for they are the fires that harden the steel, that let you know who you are. I am so enamored of the last that I wrote on my middle step-daughter’s birthday card: “I wish you difficulty.” I was unsure if she knew my meaning; if she didn’t then, I hope she does now.

So, what is a legacy? Is it a lowered flag, a display, a library bearing your name, or the countless people who have written and spoken the words:  “He was Greeley?” While flattering, to him most likely a little embarrassing, I don’t think these are what my father, your friend, your boss, Ed, would point to. I think he would say look around you at the person next to you and know that you are all, mothers, brothers, fathers, sisters, teachers. Your actions provide a framework from which everyone, at the very least, learns who you are. I think my dad would be proud of the number of teachers he helped inspire and the number of students he just helped. 

I have here an e mail from one of his former students, some of which I’ll share:

Dear Timmy and Family,

Your dad touched my life in many ways. He is THE reason I became a teacher. His enthusiasm for education was always evident and his upbeat attitude was always welcome. Even in difficult times, he made you feel good about things. I am happy he will be reunited with your mom and know he will finally be at peace. I will forever be grateful for his kind spirit, his dedication and the wonderful ways he helped shape who I am today. 

Lisa Newi Long

She included a reading from her own father’s funeral. Frankly Lisa, I don’t believe you can pay a higher compliment to a man than to share something read about your own father:

Death is nothing at all. I have only slipped away into the next room. I am I and you are you. Whatever we were to each other, that we are still. Call me by my old familiar name, speak to me in the easy way which you always used. Put no difference into your tone; wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow. Laugh as we always laughed at the little jokes we enjoyed together. Play, smile, think of me. Let my name be the household word that it always was. Let it be spoken without effect, without the ghost of a shadow on it. Life is the same as it ever was. I am but waiting for you, somewhere very near. All is well.

So now, I like to think that my father is up there standing before Peter at the Pearly Gates. I can hear Peter saying, “So, Edward, what do you have to say for yourself?” I am sure he will smile and say, “Pete, talk to me about forgiveness.” The next sound he will hear is the gates slowly opening, where his heaven will be composed of a school full of students with days of constant challenge that will go on far too long, that he will leave exhausted, fulfilled, to go home to find, waiting at the table, sitting impatiently in front of two plates of cold food, Joanie. They’ll eat, they’ll talk, they’ll dance silently in one another’s arms.

Can’t you just see it?

Tim Hart, one of Ed Hart’s five children, delivered this eulogy at the memorial service held for his father at St. John & St. Mary’s Catholic Church on Saturday, May 30.

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