Recollections of Dad (by Jonathan
Lurie [b. 1939])
As I seek to reminisce about Dad, let me confess
that I am no longer a young man. Yet, as I have aged, my
memories of him have not. The following paragraphs draw on
excerpts contained in letters, tributes, and other materials which I
collected to present some sort of tribute to a gathering celebrating
his memory--held on March 22, 1985. In later weeks and months,
however, I found myself unable to draw my memories of Dad into a
coherent, written entity. Months stretched into years, and the
years became decades. Now, more than 25 years after his death,
I try again.
Dad, as one speaker noted at a dinner in his
honor in 1975, “was born in Boston at a very early age.”
Indeed! He graduated from Dorchester High School in 1915, and
apparently was one of the editors of the school literary
magazine. (Also on the mast head was “Diogenes,
300BC.”) His stories and poems in this magazine are
probably best forgotten. But even as a high school student, he
gained a lasting love of books. In later life, a friend noted
that after Dad had won a case “his idea of a victory debauch was a
trip to Goodspeed’s [one of the most famous book stores in
Boston].” He graduated from Harvard in 1919, and after a few
years of desultory work in real estate, attended Harvard Law School,
from which he received his law degree in 1926.
Because for the greater part of his adult life,
Dad was inseparable from the Ford Hall Forum, something should be
said about his relationship to the organization, one which lasted
for more than half a century. Indeed, the Forum continues to
this day, still hosting noteworthy as well as notable speakers, and
still insisting that they answer questions from the audience.
According to an article about him published in 1966, “as a short
cocky student at Harvard,” Dad “decided to expose the forum for what
he imagined it was, a refuge for nuts and crackpots.”
Expose it, he never did, but instead he became addicted to what the
Forum stood for. By the mid 1920s, he was--to quote the
Forum’s President George Coleman--“one of our most devoted volunteer
workers.” In 1924, while at Harvard Law School, he began to
edit the Ford Hall Forum Bulletin.
Some old surviving issues give evidence of his
emerging wit. “Punctuation marks, omitted in this issue will be
found in the next.” A lot of Dad’s delightful quips concerned
the question and answer period at the Forum lectures. In the
November 1925 issue, for example:
A forumer stood on his feet
And propounded his question with heat.
His excitement was great, but sad to relate,
He was asking it out on the street.
Here is Dad’s tongue in cheek description of a hypothetical member
of the Forum audience, seeking to ask a question: "As if drawn by a
magnet, he rose to his reluctant feet….He stood there, inarticulate
and helpless. His eyes became bloodshot, his knees shook, and
perspiration oozed out on his forehead. The floor rocked
beneath him, and…he whispered his demand for the truth! And
Mr. Coleman leaned over the Platform, hand to his ear, and said
regretfully, 'Sorry, try again. I didn’t get the
question.'”
Dad even wrote a book about the Ford Hall Forum,
published in 1930. The Bulletin of the Boston Public Library
accurately described it as “a spirited history of Ford Hall…written
with wit and humor, and with an enthusiasm which becomes
contagious. On every page one feels that the book was a labor
of love,” and indeed it was. Yet, as time passed, Dad had very
little to say about his only book, a copy of which I still possess.
Perhaps it was because by the time my sister and I were old enough
to know what Ford Hall meant, it had reached maturity as an
institution, and Dad had long since attained the skill and great
reputation as its chair that went far beyond the exuberant prose in
his book. Nevertheless, it remains an enduring contribution to
his memory.
Dad’s reputation as the skillful moderator of the
Ford Hall Forum meetings was so great that sometimes it seemed to
overshadow his larger role in the law. While presiding,
he maintained order with an effective synthesis of courtesy and
wit. When, for example, after he had gently but repeatedly
reminded a questioner to come to the point of his question, the
somewhat flustered individual indignantly asked “Isn’t this an open
forum?” “To be sure,” replied Dad, “But it isn’t open all
night.” When a would- be-heckler tried to interrupt
Martin Luther King speaking at the Forum in 1967, the result was
captured in an enthusiastic fan letter. “I have just come home from
our evening with Martin Luther King and…let me praise you
particularly for your gentle authoritative and highly successful
squelching of the barbarians who were rude enough to hiss…You should
have gone into teaching. Don’t tell me—I know whatever you do
is teaching.”
In 1972, Ramsey Clark, the son of Supreme Court
Justice Tom Clark, and later to be named Attorney General by
President Jimmy Carter, spoke at the Forum. The first person to ask
a question unleashed what columnist Roger Alan Jones described as “a
John Birch-ish tirade that borders on calling Clark a traitor.
As is usually the case with such tirades, the tirader doesn’t know
when to switch off. But he never gets a chance to run out of
breath; a couple of stern ‘Sir, Sit down!’s from Lurie…and then
another Lurie rap that ends in ‘Sir, if you can’t be still, then
come back again so you will learn how we do things here.’ That
old Fair Play again. Only Lurie makes it work…and this time he
uses it to defuse the fanatical bomb just like a crack demolitions
expert. You should come just to watch Judge Lurie
perform…listening to the question from the audience, and repeating
it into the microphone so that everybody—including the speaker—can
hear it as well. Only he does a better job of asking than the
questioner. His rephrasings cut right through to the naked
essence of the question, and he does it so quickly that you wonder
where his mind is, taking time out to formulate all that so
clearly.”
Once in a while, even Dad experienced a
misstep. Duke Professor J. B. Rhine, the scholar of
parapsychology and ESP, spoke on the topic of ESP at the
Forum. During the question period, “there was an insistent
hand raised by someone with a mess of blonde hair wearing a bright
red sweater.” Dad in acknowledging “the frantic hand,
said, pointing to the blonde in red, ‘That young lady on this
side.’ The person rose and said ‘I’m a man.’" Whereupon
Dad responded with a very prompt apology: "I’m sorry. I guess
my extra-sensory perception isn’t working this evening.”
A final comment about Dad and the Forum appears
at the conclusion of this essay, but we should not forget that while
his service to it was one of the highlights of his life, there were
others. One such experience was his appointment by then
Governor, later Senator, Leverett Saltonstall as Chairman of the
Massachusetts Parole Board in 1940. Indeed, he was called to
the statehouse at 11; 30, sworn in at 12:30, and presided over his
first meeting as chairman at 2:30—all on the same day. His
appointment came even as he was investigating a trail of graft and
corruption in the Suffolk County Clerk’s office. He had
stumbled upon this trail a few months earlier, when he visited the
office to submit some documents for one of his law cases, and found
a female employee sitting at her desk, quietly sobbing. Dad,
being Dad, asked her what the problem was, and in due time she
revealed that she as well as the other staff members were compelled
to pay into a sort of slush fund maintained by the Clerk
himself. If they didn’t they would lose their jobs, and she
had to retain her post, but could not afford the paybacks.
Intrigued, Dad started digging.
He was later named counsel for an
investigatory committee of the Boston Bar Association, and when the
whole sordid episode had been brought to light, both the County
Clerk and his associate in graft resigned, and--as I recall--went to
jail. Dad received a civic award medal, the first ever
presented by the Boston City Club. The citation read in part
that the resignations of Dow and Connally “followed
investigations persistently and devotedly pursued by a private
citizen moved by no official… duty, but only by his compassion for
the victims of official oppression, and by a high sense of community
obligation.” Dowd and Connally were charged with “malfeasance,
misfeasance, and nonfeasance,” to which Dad responded, “There’s
quite a Byronic ring to that list, isn’t there?”
In 1946, Dad received a tribute from an unusual
source, a magazine put out by Massachusetts prisoners, called the
Mentor. “Looking back on several different parole Boards, it can
definitely be stated that no single member ever inspired the
confidence of the prisoners that Reuben L. Lurie enjoyed. He
was not ‘soft,’ and there were the usual disappointments.
However, his humane interpretation of his powers were such that even
those rejected unhesitatingly acknowledge his fairness.” In
fact, “the Commonwealth needs men of his type more than the public
needs a good lawyer…[and] one day his spirit of progress will be
translated into actuality.” Like virtually all of the letters,
comments, clippings, and columns on which this remembrance is based,
I don’t recall that Dad ever mentioned their existence.
Rather, he placed them in a desk drawer where, he knew that in good
time I would come across them, as indeed I did.
In 1953, Governor Christian Herter appointed Dad
as the Massachusetts Commissioner of Correction. It would be
difficult, editorialized the Boston Globe, "to imagine an
appointment better calculated to inspire public confidence than
[this one].” A good family friend wrote: “You named
Commissioner! I throw in the towel! I’m going straight!
You stay in….I’ll stay out.” Although, as will be seen, his
tenure was limited, as Commissioner Dad spent a great deal of time
talking with prisoners, always alone and unarmed, meeting with
whoever requested to see him. Only a few months into his
term, he had met with more than 300 prisoners. At the height
of tension in the Massachusetts State Prison, recalled the Boston
Herald, “Lurie strolled alone through the big yard. Nothing
happened: he knew nothing would….For Lurie…is a courageous,
crusading man.” Did he enjoy his job? “I don’t enjoy it.
I see too much misery to be able to enjoy it.”
And when barely a year later, in 1954, he took
his seat as a Judge of the Superior Court, he brought to the bench
first-hand knowledge of the prison system, and how it might affect
men and women sent through it. Dad frequently would comment
that “more judges ought to go to jail.” Of course, he did not
refer only to the corrupt, political hack. Rather he meant
well-meaning jurists with no first-hand experience of conditions in
the system to which they would confine people who had been convicted
and sentenced in their court rooms. Dad’s innate compassion
was tempered by an unequalled knowledge of the Massachusetts penal
system (parole, corrections, and the court.)
His appointment to the Court on which he served
for almost two decades came in 1954. It was greeted with
acclamation as well as tributes to his “great ability, deep
integrity and a high sense of justice.” Perhaps his friend
Erwin Griswold, Dean of Harvard law School put it best: “The
public should be congratulated, rather than you.” A rabbi
wrote that the Jewish tradition “conceives of a judge as a partner
to the Holy One, blessed be He. It is most fortunate for
society when the Holy One has such partners as yourself.”
Dad’s tenure as a judge well reflected a concern
dominant throughout his adult career—be it as a lawyer,
Chairman of the Parole Board, Chairman of the Brookline Board of
Selectmen, Commissioner of Correction, and Judge of the Superior
Court. Perhaps because he was so familiar with its use, and indeed
exercised it himself, Dad feared the abuse of power, especially from
those in a position to apply it officially. Like the famous
British historian Lord Acton, he believed that "power tends to
corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” In
1959, for example, he was assigned to a criminal court session in
Cambridge. I was still an undergrad at Harvard, and went down
to the Court House to watch him in action. A steel mesh cage
in which prisoners were confined was in place in front of the
Bench. Dad asked why it was there, and was informed that the
Sheriff had so ordered. Gently, Dad indicated that he would
not hold court until it had been removed, which it was—quite
promptly. Dad referred to it as “a monstrous relic of the dark
ages. My feelings on the subject," he said, “are apparent.”
The Boston Herald applauded Dad’s action, noting that courts are not
merely “for the convenience of law enforcement officers.
They are for the protection of the public, including persons accused
of crime.”
Only one year later, attorneys for the Boston
Police Commissioner sought a ruling from Dad to compel the state
auditor to approve payment for certain charges on contracts incurred
by the Commissioner’s office. It turned out that, contrary to
law, he had not used competitive bidding in awarding the contracts,
but had given them to his political cronies. Dad not
only rejected the Commissioner’s request, but referred the entire
matter to the Attorney General’s Office. He noted “it is
expected that our police will clearly align themselves on the side
of law and order. It would be the height of irony not to hold
a police commissioner to a similar standard.” Again, the
Herald applauded even as it asked “must Massachusetts depend, for
the initiation of searching investigations into allegation or
intimations of misconduct in public office, upon the rigid sense of
propriety of an occasional Reuben Lurie….?” Of course, lower
court judges were not exempt from Dad’s occasional scrutiny, and in
one such case, he denounced the conduct of a District Court Judge
for a ruling which “was infected with prejudicial constitutional
error.”
Two additional aspects of Dad’s service as a
judge must be noted. Although he never mentioned them to me, I
found two separate folders among the papers in his desk. One
contained letters from what appears to be parents of young
defendants on trial before him. In 1964, a parent wrote of
“the new lease on life you have given [name unimportant], and
our entire family. With God’s help, I hope that at the end of
the year’s time he will have proven himself worthy of your
concern. I was in Court on Friday but was so completely
dissolved in tears of gratitude, for your kind, humble handling of
the power vested in you, I couldn’t step forward.” In 1971,
“you gave my son a chance to find himself and straighten out his
life…and I will always remember you in my prayers.”
Later in that year, “I sincerely thank God for placing you as our
judge, Your wisdom and compassionate understanding was simply
overwhelming. Judge Lurie, you are the essence of the grace of
God.” (A hand written notation indicates that Dad answered the
letter almost immediately, but I could find no copy of what he
wrote.)
On a different note, some items he preserved
dealt first with letters received from jury members who sat on some
of his cases, and/or who later wrote about their experience.
Second were some transcripts of his instructions to his
jurors. Although I observed him on the bench many a time, I
never heard him instruct a jury pool as he introduced them to their
responsibilities. His written comments, however, reflected
learning, laced with humility, always leavened by wit.
Milton Bass, writing in the Berkshire Eagle, described his
experience as a 1958 member of a jury pool when Dad held court in
Pittsfield. “The most impressive part of the whole court
session, aside from the ponderous and wonderfully inevitable due
process of law, was to watch the actions of the judge as he hovered
over the entire scene. The brilliance, knowledge, sensitivity,
humor, humaneness, warmth, integrity and sincerity of this man were
beacons which illuminate your understanding of the democratic way of
life. The republic and commonwealth are unshakable as long as
men like this are part of our judicial system.”
Three years earlier, in explaining their
responsibilities to new jurors, Dad noted that some of them might be
challenged with or without reason by lawyers involved in the
particular case. “There is nothing personal about a challenge,
and you are not to regard yourself as having been insulted because
you have been challenged….Dismiss from your mind any
resentment….[and] if it affords you any comfort, assume that when
you are challenged it is because you look too intelligent. And
if that is calculated to bring you too much inflation of the ego,
assume you do not look intelligent enough.”
But Dad recognized the jury as the lynch pin of
the trial process. “You are to be,” he would tell them,
“non-conductors of heat. This is difficult, very difficult,
but you...must rise to the challenge…” Unlike the citizens to
whom he spoke, “I envy your service as jurors. I have never
sat on a jury; I shall never sit on a jury, and yet…I am sure there
will come the realization that you have made a real
contribution…which will bring strength to the belief that the minds
of men are free, and that justice can be given to people without
fear, without favor, honestly and uprightly.”
This recollection about Dad would be incomplete
without some mention of his wife Ethel, my mom. Apparently Dad
had loved her since their teen age years, and as he sadly noted
during the memorial gathering after her sudden death in 1975, “there
was never a time, it seemed, when I did not know her.” Of
course, until his own death ten years later, I would say the same
thing about him. Dad wooed her in high school, college and
even after law school. Every note, it seems, and every letter
received from him, she saved--especially his poems, which became
famous within our family They reveal his ongoing love
for her, constant for more than half a century.
In 1958, for example, they set out on a wintry
Saturday evening to Symphony Hall, for their regular Boston Symphony
Orchestra concert. (Never mind that while Dad was totally tone deaf,
mom was not only a trained musician, but also an outstanding piano
teacher, and she loved music. That was enough for him.) She
tripped and fell on the icy walk in front of their house.
Trying to assist her, Dad also fell. They never made it to
Symphony Hall that night, but it inspired a Valentine’s Day poem--a
“tender ballad in honor of a bumped rump.”
Probably the last letter he ever wrote to her just ten days before
she died, and almost 50 years since they had married, noted that “my
love for you…continues to do the impossible--it grows from day to
day.”
And so it was until that terrible afternoon in
March, 1975, when she died of a massive heart attack, in New Jersey
where Mom and Dad had planned to spend the seder with us. As
should be obvious from the above, Dad was a one woman man, and when
she passed away, much more of him died we realized at the time. In
later years, our housekeeper Mary would talk with him about
mom. Once she asked him if he had ever compared her to other
women. “No, my dear,” he responded. “She was beyond
compare.”
Like many men of his generation, Dad expected
that he would die first, and had planned his affairs
accordingly. But fate decreed otherwise, and forced him to
cope with not one but three tragic events, almost
simultaneously. He faced mandatory retirement from the bench
due to a new state Constitutional amendment; his wife was taken from
him; and he witnessed the end of his daughter’s marriage, even as
she was ensnared by multiple sclerosis. One need not dwell at
any great length on the decade left to him after these blows.
For a while he tried to cope. Half-heartedly he agreed
to do some legal work, but with minimal success. The many old
friends of Mom and Dad sought to welcome him. And we
tried--how we tried--to get him to come to us, to be with us,
and yes--even stay with us.
But he refused. Always a very private man
except and only except to the woman he adored, he kept his
silence. And when his brother Moe passed away in 1979, he
began to withdraw even more markedly. The last few years of his life
need not be discussed. But even in his physical and mental
decline, he never totally lost that pixyish touch which was his
immortal trade mark. Just a few weeks before he slipped away,
he was being very difficult with the nurse in the hospital--at a
time when we as well as Mary were visiting. Turning to the
nurse, Mary whispered that “He really is such a wonderful man,” and
from the bed we heard: “Say it louder, Mary.”
I don’t know if Dad was given to
introspection. But if so, he could have reflected “on a life
in which he had achieved success, lived well, laughed often and
loved deeply, gained the respect of intelligent men and women,
filled his niche and accomplished his task, and left the world
better than he found it, even as he looked for the best in others
and gave the best he had.” He never lost faith in the
unbounded potential of people to better themselves. And so I
return once more to Dad and the Ford Hall Forum. Why was it so
important to him?
Because it educated its listeners about the ways
of power, and gave them a chance to participate in one aspect of
self government. Issues openly discussed and debated served,
he believed, as a counterpoise to power. He saw the
Forum as a means of educating citizens to their civic
responsibilities. At the height of his career, he sensed
real need for such education. “We have fallen victim,” he
wrote, “to the insidious plague of a creeping civic inertia.
We have become blind. We no longer have the vision to see the
dream of the founding fathers. We have become deaf; we no
longer hear the voices of great people of the past, to whose
memories we pay lip service and utter meaningless sounds….We have
lost our sense of taste; we no longer distinguish between assets and
liabilities of would be candidates. We respond to the
eloquence which is bombast, to promises which are fake….We have even
lost our sense of smell. The malady of corruption, of
venality, of the quid-pro-quo favor no longer rouses us to the
action of indignation and effective protest.” He wrote these
lines long ago in his time, but they describe today, and they might
well predict tomorrow.
In his papers, I found--copied out in his own
hand--an “excerpt from the writings of a philosopher of the
Confucian School--2500 years ago.” The symmetry of the lines
well reflect the structure of Dad’s life: “The ancients
wishing to exemplify virtue throughout the world, first governed
well their states. Wishing to govern well their states, they
first regulated their families. Wishing to regulate their
families, they first cultivated their persons. Wishing to
cultivate their persons, they first rectified their hearts.
Wishing to rectify their hearts, they first sought to be sincere in
their thoughts. Wishing to be sincere in their thoughts, they
first extended to the utmost their knowledge. Such extension
of knowledge lay in the investigation of things.
When things are investigated, our knowledge will
be extended to the utmost. When our knowledge is extended to
the utmost, our thoughts will be sincere. When our thoughts
are sincere, our hearts will be rectified. When our hearts are
rectified, our persons will be well cultivated. When our persons are
well cultivated, our families will be well regulated. When our
families are well regulated, our states will be well governed, and
when the states are well governed, the whole world will be at
peace.”