My dad grew up on the poor side of middle class. My dad and
I, during a recent father-son trip to Miami, had hours upon hours to talk and I
learned some things about his childhood I never knew. Bob told me that his dad Morris was stressed
all the time. If you knew my dad well,
you knew that he loathed stress and did what ever it took to avoid it or to
minimize it. In any case, Morris, my dad
said, worked way too hard for way too little and for someone else, rather than
for himself. When Morris had the chance
to strike out on his own, he was too afraid to do it and the opportunity—really
the opportunity of a lifetime-- slipped away.
My dad as an adult always felt that Morris had made a life-altering
mistake and even in the capacity of a 10 year old at the time, he knew his dad
had messed up big time. Bob learned from
Morris’s mistakes and made sure to pass the lesson along to me.
My dad—ever the giver of kind acts--was himself the
recipient of kindness at key junctions in his life. When he was 17 and a freshman at Ohio State
University, his friend Eddie Stein gave my dad tuition money. After college, an influential dentist took a
liking to my dad and helped my dad get into dental school, where he ultimately
met my mom. He told us the stories over and over again and
reminded us that an individual person’s kindness and actions can have a profound
and a lasting positive impact on another’s life. My dad gave to homeless people, made phone
calls on behalf of mere acquaintances, and did his part to help others achieve
their goals because he felt such a need to repay the kindness that he had
received. In an era of me, me, me, this
was an extraordinary virtue.
Robert S Schoor RIP. You are missed.
The IU (your son)
