{"id":42,"date":"2019-03-26T07:41:08","date_gmt":"2019-03-26T07:41:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/finkfinale.com.cp-ht-11.webhostbox.net\/myron\/?page_id=42"},"modified":"2022-03-11T09:10:09","modified_gmt":"2022-03-11T09:10:09","slug":"reflections-anji","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/finkfinale.com\/myron\/reflections-anji\/","title":{"rendered":"Reflections-Anji"},"content":{"rendered":"

Reflections from Myron\u2019s daughter Anji<\/strong>\u00a0 \u00a0(.pdf<\/a>)<\/p>\n

(or \u201cHello, I must be going\u201d)<\/strong><\/p>\n

First of all, I think that Myron would have loved to have his Obituary begin this way:<\/p>\n

Myron shuffled off this mortal coil on March 28, 2019.<\/em><\/p>\n

Myron treasured words, he could be quite witty, and he appreciated Shakespeare, so that is how I\u2019d like to start.<\/p>\n

Some years ago, Myron put together a lot of facts about his life, at my request, so that I would have accurate information for his eventual Obituary.\u00a0 Myron also told me, more than once, that he feared that he would not be \u201cknown.\u201d\u00a0 My mother thinks that this fear may be related to how disturbed Myron felt, when his own father died, that his father’s Obituary was “so short.”\u00a0 It seems to me that Myron\u2019s fear of\u00a0 \u201cnot being known\u201d is more likely to happen if he only has a short, factual Obituary; those facts are such a small part of Myron\u2019s story, as is the case for anyone who has lived a full life.\u00a0 Because both \u201ctooting his own horn\u201d and telling embellished and rambling stories with a lot of commentary were things Myron did very often, I decided to write his Obituary in similar fashion.\u00a0 I\u2019m augmenting Myron\u2019s facts so that others can feel that they \u201cknew\u201d him.\u00a0 I\u2019ve elaborated on his facts with reflections and memories, mine and other people\u2019s, and with stories he told me over the years.\u00a0 I\u2019m hoping this version will give a more nuanced picture of who Myron was and what it was like to be in his presence.<\/p>\n

\n

Myron Fink shuffled off this mortal coil in the very early morning of March 28, 2019. He was 39 days short of his 95th birthday.<\/p>\n

Myron was born in New York City on May 6, 1924. Myron died in Bellingham, WA, in his bedroom at his home on March 28, 2019, with his beloved son Paul at his bedside.\u00a0 He arrived in the spring and he left in the spring.\u00a0 He loved that view out his window, the sky and the trees waving with the wind, until the end.<\/p>\n

Myron was the first child of Sarah Kaufman and Leon David Fink.\u00a0 Leon was just a young child when his family emigrated from a small Jewish village along the Russian-Polish border after numerous violent attacks on their village somewhere in Eastern Europe. He couldn\u2019t read or write and didn\u2019t know when he was born but decided to celebrate his birthday on July 4 because he was so grateful to have come to America.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know much about Sarah\u2019s family except that she was born in the US of Polish parents and that her father, Myron\u2019s grandfather, \u201chad a candy store\u201d on the Lower East Side.\u00a0 It\u2019s safe to assume that both of Myron\u2019s parents\u2019 families had experienced violence and anti-Semitism at some points in their histories and felt truly blessed to become American citizens.<\/p>\n

Myron was born at Second Avenue Hospital in Manhattan on the first Tuesday in May of 1924.\u00a0 (I looked it up: it was a Tuesday.\u00a0 I also learned that, one year later, New York City\u2019s population made it the largest city in the world with 7,774,000 people.) When Myron was four, seven months after his mother had given birth to his sister Doris, his mother died of Spanish influenza.\u00a0 His father then placed his children with their mother\u2019s relatives, and sometime later he moved Myron to a Jewish orphanage in Manhattan (the Hebrew Orphan Asylum on Amsterdam Avenue, between 136th and 138th Streets).<\/p>\n

Myron called the orphanage \u201cthe institution.\u201d\u00a0 He did not provide a lot of details about the isolation, neglect, and abuse he experienced there, but when asked about himself he always started there. \u201cMy mother died when I was four and I grew up in the institution.\u201d\u00a0 This was the dominant story in Myron\u2019s consciousness, and it haunted him all the days of his life (and in some ways, all the days of his wife\u2019s and children\u2019s lives also).<\/p>\n

Paul recalls Myron telling him that Myron was able to get the people in charge there to give him a key to the library.\u00a0 There, he went to escape the intensity and noise outside that room. Myron told Paul that every boy was beaten regularly, and that he was frightened every day.\u00a0 Much of the violence came from the older boys, who kept the younger boys fearful for their safety.\u00a0 His only really fond memories were his annual visits to Summer Camp (in the Adirondacks) where he could finally feel safe, feel free, breathe good air, truly play, swim in the lake, and where children would not get beaten.<\/p>\n

Paul remembers Myron telling him that his father visited him at the institution\u00a0 almost every day at the end of his work shift. Myron said that the other boys were incredibly jealous that Myron had a father who was always visiting, while Myron was furious that his father would not get him out of there and begged him regularly to do so. His cousin Sondra recalls that she knew that she had a cousin in the orphanage and remembers that she could look at him through bars of the gate but she was not allowed to talk to him. Myron doesn\u2019t remember seeing her or knowing about her while he was in the orphanage.<\/p>\n

Clearly intellectually hungry and gifted and having no one to suggest what he should read, Myron once told me, \u201cI went to the orphanage library and started with A.\u201d\u00a0 He developed a stutter and often went without speaking at all.\u00a0 He made a lifelong friend in the orphanage, a boy named Abe Simon, who was his best man at his wedding and his best friend all his life.\u00a0 (Myron told me this story:\u00a0 \u201cAbe Simon was my best friend at the institution.\u00a0 He used to say, \u2018Myron, just talk.\u2019\u00a0 I\u2019d say, \u2018Just talk?\u00a0 But about what?\u2019\u00a0 He\u2019d say, \u2018It doesn\u2019t matter, I just like to hear you talk.\u2019\u201d)<\/p>\n

Myron lived in the orphanage for about ten years, at which point the governor of New York shut down the orphanage as unfit for a place to raise kids.\u00a0 Myron returned to live with his father, and he graduated from DeWitt Clinton High School in the Bronx in 1942.<\/p>\n

Myron enjoyed telling me about how he and Abe and other boys used to hang out in Manhattan at night loudly chanting this funny refrain:<\/p>\n

Football baseball swimming in the tank!
\nWe are the boys with money in the bank!
\nCity College!
\nCity College!
\nIt\u2019s a college?<\/p>\n

Myron was a student in the College of Agriculture at Cornell University from 1942-43.\u00a0 If you were to ask, \u201cBut how does an impoverished Jewish kid afford Cornell?\u201d\u00a0 Myron would tell you a story reflecting his tactical skills:\u00a0 Cornell Ag school was a statutory college operated by the private Cornell University on behalf of the state. You could go to Cornell and still be a part of the SUNY system, and Myron played the system, not particularly intending to stay in the Ag field but wanting to find a way \u201cin\u201d to the Cornell, Ivy League, system.\u00a0 He loved reminiscing about the field experience he had one summer in upstate New York where he was placed with an anti-Semitic farmer.\u00a0 Myron said, \u201cI decided to tell him that I was a Lutheran.\u00a0 I have no idea why I chose Lutheran!\u201d\u00a0 When Myron told this story, he laughed and laughed, repeating, \u201cA Lutheran!\u00a0 Can you imagine? A Lutheran!\u201d<\/p>\n

Myron served in the US Army from 1943-46 (where he saw action with the 103rd Infantry Division in France, Germany, and Austria).\u00a0 He didn\u2019t share much with us about this time in his life except for a few particulars:\u00a0 that on some bitter cold mornings, with no tent or sleeping bag and only one wool blanket to sleep in, he couldn\u2019t open his eyes because his lashes had frozen shut, that it was during this time that he developed a loathing for Spam, that they burned leeches off their bodies with matches, and that he envied the guys in the Navy because \u201cthey got showers!\u201d\u00a0 When Myron saw that the medics in the army had a much easier time of it than the infantry, he told someone there that he was planning to go to medical school after the war, and I think that he then got assigned as a helper in the medical areas.<\/p>\n

When Myron returned from Europe, he went back to Cornell on the GI bill:\u00a0 this time to the College of Arts and Sciences.\u00a0 He graduated with an A.B. “with distinction in Philosophy” in 1948.\u00a0\u00a0 While at Cornell, Myron took every course in Philosophy that was offered, including all the upper level ones that were usually for grad students.\u00a0 Here\u2019s a story where I probably have some details wrong (he told me this in 2011):\u00a0 \u201cI decided to major in philosophy because of this guy, Tommy Durkin, who was an air artillery ROTC in 1942.\u00a0 He was a graduate student in philosophy at Cornell.\u00a0 While we were in the army, he used to sneak off the base.\u00a0 I asked him \u2018What do you do when you sneak off?\u2019\u00a0 He says, \u2018I fuck off.\u2019\u00a0 (lots of laughter)\u00a0 I fuck off!\u00a0 He’s the reason I majored in philosophy.\u00a0 He taught me Plato and Aristotle in 3 months.\u201d<\/p>\n

Myron then studied at New York Law School from 1948-51 and earned his LL.B. “Cum Laude.” He was admitted to the Bar of the State of New York in 1951.\u00a0 He practiced law in the firm of Morris Diamond in Queens for the next several years and later worked as a Court Attache in the Court of General Sessions in Manhattan.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s another story Myron told me many years ago about his mental health challenges in his 20\u2019s:<\/p>\n

While he was in college (post-WWII), Myron gradually withdrew, finally couldn’t take exams, and was excused because of help from a psychiatrist at Cornell who kept saying, “Hold on – just hold on a little longer.”\u00a0 He was referred to a psychiatrist at Bellevue in NYC named Martin Stern.\u00a0 Myron called him “Stern.”\u00a0 Myron said he didn’t talk for a year:\u00a0 he typed letters which Stern then read while with Myron.\u00a0 Myron saw Stern for 7 years.\u00a0 He remembered these two things Stern said:\u00a0 “There’s nothing inconsistent about you” and “You’ve learned academically but not emotionally – you have a lot to learn.”\u00a0 Myron paid Stern with a $10 bill at the end of each visit.<\/p>\n

At the end of telling me this story, Myron said, “Six years later I introduced him to my fianc\u00e9e.\u00a0 He was delighted.”<\/p>\n

In early 1955, Myron was fixed up on a blind date by a friend and met a young social worker, Elka Myra Person, who had come to the US from the Netherlands in 1939 and had grown up in Great Neck, Long Island.\u00a0 Elka thinks that she told her mother after their first meeting, \u201cI\u2019ve met the man I\u2019m going to marry.\u201d\u00a0 Elka introduced Myron to A.A. Milne, and they read Winnie the Pooh together in Central Park in the spring of 1955.\u00a0 Three months after meeting, they married on May 8 in Elka\u2019s parents\u2019 apartment on Central Park South.\u00a0 This man, heartbroken so early, found himself a gem.<\/p>\n

Myron often said that marrying Elka \u201cwas the best thing I ever did.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 The couple settled in the Riverdale section of the Bronx, and Myron began studying to become a professional law librarian at the School of Library Service at Columbia University.\u00a0 Upon his graduation with an M.S. in Library Science in 1957, the couple moved to Los Angeles, where Myron was employed as Reference Librarian in the UCLA School of Law.\u00a0 A year later, he accepted a position of Law Librarian and Assistant Professor of Law at Loyola University Law School.\u00a0 There he taught Legal Research and Writing, Legal Bibliography, and Legal Writing.\u00a0 He remained in this position for five years, during which time he earned a Masters in Law degree (LL.M.) \u201cMagna Cum Laude\u201d from New York Law School.\u00a0 His Masters thesis, “Research in California Law,” was later published and used by students in various law schools in California.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s where I\u2019d like to take a moment to look back at all the ways that Myron\u2019s intellect, hunger for words, fierce survival instincts, calculated decisions, and luck in meeting kind and helpful people along the way, make his a story of triumph rather than tragedy.\u00a0 His cousin Sondra, who met Myron in his post-orphanage days (long after she had watched him through the orphanage gate in her childhood) fondly remembers Myron and his friend Abe visiting and taking care of her \u201cas a single woman\u201d in the city.\u00a0 \u201cThey were my benefactors,\u201d she recently said to me.\u00a0 And with great affection and awe, she added, \u201cIt was amazing what Myron accomplished in his lifetime.\u201d<\/p>\n

During their time in Los Angeles, Myron and Elka had two children, my brother Paul in 1958 and me in 1960.\u00a0 In 1963, our family moved to Albuquerque, NM, where Myron accepted the position of Law Librarian and Associate Professor of Law at University of New Mexico.\u00a0 During the next 27 years, Myron developed what many considered to be the finest Law School Library for its size in the southwest.\u00a0 It became the legal reference center for the state of New Mexico and served as the local bar law library.\u00a0 Myron taught courses in Legal Research and Writing, Equitable Remedies, Remedies, and Injunctions.\u00a0 For many years and up to the year he retired, Myron taught an innovative seminar in Law and Social Change for third year students which was critical and challenging and very popular.\u00a0 His published writings include “Good Books for Law Students,” an annotated selection of outstanding books for law students.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s another story where I may have some of the details wrong but it\u2019s mostly accurate:\u00a0 There was apparently a humor magazine published at UNM in the early 1960\u2019s, and the writers of the magazine had conjured up a fictional character and given him the funniest name they could think of.\u00a0 Myron was hired at the law school around this time, and then an article was written with the headline \u201cLast Laugh Is On The Staff.\u201d\u00a0 Apparently this character had been named Myron Fink.<\/p>\n

Myron became a committed Socialist while in college and remained one for the rest of his life.\u00a0 While a professor at UNM, Myron was the New Mexico state chairperson of the US China Friendship Committee, a national group in the US supporting Mao Tse Tung\u2019s Cultural Revolution in China.\u00a0 He was active in the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Lawyers Guild (he led the Albuquerque chapter).<\/p>\n

Myron loved nature, and the family regularly visited national and state parks for summer holidays. One summer, we visited Grand Tetons, Yellowstone, Glacier, Lake Louise, Banff, and the ancient forests of the Pacific Northwest. It\u2019s likely on this trip that his son Paul became so enamored with wilderness – a love he still has.\u00a0 While camping, Myron often told us stories in the tent and worked in the line \u201cand they ate succotash, pinto beans, and spinach\u201d wherever it might fit.<\/p>\n

Food was an enormous part of Myron\u2019s life.\u00a0 He shoveled food into his mouth without noticing it, probably because he grew up competing with many children for the sparse food offered at meals.\u00a0 He identified strongly with Dickens\u2019 Oliver Twist.\u00a0 For someone focused on food, Myron married the right woman.\u00a0 She kept him in delicious meals for almost 64 years, and he loved to say \u201cCall me anything but late for supper!\u201d<\/p>\n

Some related stories about Myron and food:<\/p>\n

When I was growing up in Albuquerque, he fed my dog, Shadow, underneath the table like a naughty child, and he had no interest or skills in training her in any way.\u00a0 He proudly pronounced her a \u201crogue dog\u201d \u2013 probably vicariously enjoying her unwillingness to walk on a leash and her rebellious nature.<\/p>\n

When Myron was still driving and independent, Todd remembers running into him at the Food Coop and seeing Myron looking very guilty and holding something behind his back.\u00a0 Myron told Todd that he sometimes kept the change from something Elka had asked him to buy and then bought himself a chocolate bar, and that he was \u201ctrying out different chocolate bars every time I\u2019m here, but please don\u2019t tell Elka.\u201d Elka recalls that whenever they would shop at the Coop together, Myron would casually help himself to the grapes and cherries on display, which was very embarrassing for her.<\/p>\n

In his last years in Bellingham, Myron made several trips to the kitchen in the middle of most nights, snacking on heated milk and pickled herring and peanut butter and mandarin oranges, often washed down with Newman\u2019s Lemonade.\u00a0 He often sought out other treats that Elka had forgotten to hide from him.<\/p>\n

Speaking of good food, I\u2019d like to thank Nicole Carter of Bellingham Technical College\u2019s Caf\u00e9 Culinaire for always including Myron\u2019s birthday celebration in their jam-packed May schedule.\u00a0 She said to me once, \u201cIt wouldn\u2019t feel like May without having your dad here for his birthday.\u201d\u00a0 We loved our annual 3-course meal there and felt so lucky to get in!<\/p>\n

We grew up hearing Myron repeat certain stories and quotes, and he especially loved Marx Brothers and WC Fields movies and the radio comedy team Bob & Ray. Elka remembers Myron telling her that his childhood friends frequently went to the movies with him mainly in order to hear him laugh. Thanks to the magic of Youtube, one can hear these bits again, and I\u2019m including links to some.\u00a0 If you listen, please try to imagine Myron ROARING with laughter alongside you, no matter how many times he had heard these routines before.\u00a0 Shaking with laughter, repeating the lines, and even crying from the joy of how funny he found these bits \u2013 imagine that as you listen.<\/p>\n

Reuniting the Whirleys<\/em>:<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=IYvBWNdiFiU<\/a><\/p>\n

Wally Ballou at the Paperclip Factory<\/em>:<\/p>\n