MY FRIEND EDDIE

I remember Eddie. He used to play the violin--- pretty good I thought. Rattled off the Mendelsohn like it was child's play. Also the Bruch and the Bach. And he played one part of the Bach Double. I thought that was pretty good, at least till he got Sue to play the other part, two violins, great music. What a thrill it was to sit at their feet while they practiced! It was live music, chamber music, because the chamber was his living room and there was only the three of us there, very intimate.

He introduced me to classical music and knew how to get free tickets in Manhattan. Imagine Arturo Tascanini and the NBC Symphony in studio 8H of Rockefeller Center and Lewisohn Stadium in the Bronx, free summer concerts of the New York Philharmonic! Eddie got the tickets, he knew all the angles in the world of free live classical music. I was keen to be his buddy. He was always smiling and upbeat, always a new adventure, tickets up his sleeve.

He also introduced me to hi-fi! He soldered together the first electronic Heathkit, an FM tuner. He said, "listen to this... listen to this!" And I could hear nothing. He had the volume turned up loud and I could hear nothing. "That's right," he said, "it's frequency modulation, no static, no hiss, just a background of silence." And then the 'piece de resistance,' the rich sound of WQXR coming on the air at twelve noon, a full, rich sound coming out of the silence, with FM all the overtones intact, nothing lost in transmission. His old radio had a 14 inch speaker with a large magnet, so it was my first experience with high fidelity and it was awesome, after the tinny, staticy music coming through small speakers on AM. Eddie was always cutting edge, avant garde, pens in his shirt pocket.

Later in life he became a professor of physics, nuclear physics, heavy duty research, University of Connecticut in Storrs. I visited him there once and met his wife, Rita. We kept in touch through the years and sometimes we would visit when he came to a physics convention in Ann Arbor, where I went to school. We'd talk and reminisce and catch up over a pizza in the Cottage Inn. He was still upbeat and unselfconsciously bragging, about his research, his family, his good life. I never minded his sharing his triumphs with me. It wasn't one-upmanship, just being open and honest with an old friend.

He put away his violin and never took it up again, despite the fact that even as a teenager, he was concertmaster of the Bronx Symphony Orchestra. But the best was his playing the Bach Double with Sue. Sue died last year. Eddie died last week. Brain tumor, six weeks.

We are all getting old. Old friends are dropping like flies along the wayside. It's almost like war, but no loud explosions, just these quiet implosions that we call cancer. Death is catching up with us, every one, one way or the other, heart or stroke or cancer. Never heard of a single person escaping the ultimate fate.

Best we appreciate every moment, every day. Life is precious. Soon it will be snatched away. Sooner or later.