ROOTS & BRANCHES

Last week’s “Roots & Branches” profiled the great advice I received from Richard C. “Old Pete” Peters, the managing editor of the Reading Times, the first daily newspaper at which I worked.

My premise is that our chosen family of people who affected our lives—for the good; it’s not worth remembering anyone who affected for the worse—are part of our family history.

And it’s interesting to me that Old Pete inadvertently led me to the subject of this week’s “chosen family” member, the late Hofstra Professor Herbert Rosenbaum, by urging me to take courses to learn about government.

Rosenbaum was a political science professor who had knew the practical as well as the theoretical—he had been a delegate that last time New York state had rewritten it’s constitution—and had a specialty in American politics.

Now, as an American politics and history buff growing up, once I changed my major poli sci, I was looking to branch out to the wider world.

So when Rosenbaum and I bumped into each other and shared lunch at a Roy Rogers restaurant near campus in spring of my freshman year, I was unthinking enough to tell him casually that I expected to take most of my major courses in international topics, since “I think I have a pretty good handle of the American scene.”

The barest of smiles crossed Rosenbaum’s face as he calmly replied, “I wish I could say that.”

I merely nodded and nervously laughed at my conceit.

And it wasn’t long before I was taking courses with “Herbie,” as we came to call him—never to his face!

One of them was an evening class and a tradition developed that semester when I’d arrive 15 minutes or so ahead of the class as he was making his tea to keep his voice going after having taught several courses earlier in the day.

Every class we learned more about each other, usually prompted by his insightful questions. I learned how he and his Jewish family had fled the coming Nazi takeover, coning to America, fighting for the U.S. in the South Pacific, before going to New York University on the GI Bill.

And when I was elected as editor-in-chief of Hofstra’s student weekly, The Chronicle, that evening he smiled broadly as he recalled his own election as editor at NYU. We had a bond in common.

The poli sci department at Hofstra had a tradition of having a special ceremony for majors at which one or another faculty member gave a “roast” of the new grad. I was never prouder than when “Herbie” gave my roast—referencing our encounter freshman year and saying that “despite how much Jim thought he knew back then, I think we have taught him well.”

I’d encounter him periodically until he passed just a few years ago. A true member of my “chosen family.”