Steve Israel: Reflections on two inspiring men whose values endure – Times Herald-Record

Steve Israel for the Times Herald-Record| Times Herald-Record

As a boy whose father died when I was a baby, the most important man in my life never threw me a baseball or football. He barely knew Willie Mays from Joe Willie Namath. Yet my grandpa Max Botwinick was my ideal of a man. He had an inner strength fueled by his compassion for his fellow men and women that inspires me to this day.

When he was just a teenager in early 20thcentury Russia, he was exiled to Siberia for life for protesting the murder and beatings of thousands of Jews like him. He escaped after 11 months and came to America where he became a housepainter and union leader who fought for the rights of all workers. As Ive written before, I never heard him say a negative word about anyone because of their religion, race or ethnicity or describe people that way. At family gatherings, when someone said something negative about someone elses race, religion or ethnicity, he called them on it.

He lived by a creed that still guides me and is exemplified by a story he often told me that his father told to him: If your mother makes you a new coat, you wouldnt want someone to throw mud on it. So you shouldnt throw mud on someone elses coat.

The most important man in my life as a grown up may at first seem so different than my grandpa. My father-in-law, Joe Curtis, was a semi pro baseball player who played a nifty first base. Yet his kindness and compassion are as much a part of him as his Brooklyn accent and also inspire me to this day.

I once wrote about how my mom, who raised me by herself, tried to do what other little boys fathers did, and buy me my first baseball glove. But because she knew as much about baseball as I did about quantum physics, she bought me a flimsy little plastic one not a real leather one like dads bought their sons.

After Joe read the story, he gave me his leather baseball glove when I was in my 50s.

On this Fathers Day, when blustery tough-talking still masquerades as manliness, the two most important men in my life taught me that kindness, compassion and integrity are what really matter. My father-in-law and my late grandpa are reminders that even when we despair at the worlds often unfathomable cruelty, we can still find comfort in the goodness that exists around us.

I only heard my grandpa raise his voice once, when I was a little boy. He was talking on the phone with a doctor caring for his other daughter, my moms sister, who was hospitalized. Apparently, my grandfather was upset that the treatment he had been told would help her only made her worse. His yelling may have frightened me, but I eventually realized he was only expressing the depth of his love for his daughter.

And almost until the day he died at 93, this shortish man stood tall for the causes he believed in. In his late 80s, he joined protests against the Vietnam War. Even after he turned 90, he took the bus from Bayonne, New Jersey, to his union meetings on 14thStreet in New York City just to support his fellow workers.

Joe Curtis, now 97 and also a union man who distributed the New York Times, has his kindness as deeply engrained as the tattoo on his arm that he got serving in the Navy during World War II. A few years ago, Joe saw me walking outside without a hat on a cool, drizzly summers day. He was so worried, youd think I was walking naked in a blizzard. When I once told him I was about to drive back to Sullivan County from New York City in the rain, he was so concerned, youd think I was driving in a blizzard.

On this Fathers Day, my grandpa Max Botwinick and my father-in-law, Joe Curtis, are examples of what the world so desperately needs: hearts that beat with kindness and integrity that makes them stand tall as inspirations to us all.

steveisrael53@outlook.com

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Steve Israel: Reflections on two inspiring men whose values endure - Times Herald-Record