Remembering a devoted Red Sox fan and WWII vet

 

Springtime is for baseball --- and remembering Ike.
My Dad would have enjoyed the just-ended nine-game Red Sox winning streak after they lost three straight to start the 2021 season. He was a huge Sox fan, and we especially bonded during the “Impossible Dream” year of 1967.
Although he’s been gone for 18 years, he always seems to be rooting for the Sox alongside me during the baseball season. Enjoy this tribute to him.

This column was published in the April 2021 edition of Jewish Rhode Island of Providence, RI

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February, March and April usually give me multiple opportunities to remember my father Ike. That’s because his yahrzeit (the 9^th of Adar II  or Adar I, depending on whether it’s a leap year) is close to two Jewish holidays and an unofficial New England holiday.
That lets me remember Ike on his yahrzeit, days before Purim; on the corresponding English anniversary of his death (March 13, 2003); on the eighth day of Passover when Yizkor is recited; and on Opening Day of the baseball season. This year I observed his Feb. 20 yahrzeit, paid tribute to him on my blog on March 13, and I’ll be saying Yizkor for him on the last day of Passover.
Growing up, Ike and my mother Sylvia were active in the Hebrew School in Dorchester that my sister and I attended. They went the extra mile to make the students feel wanted. Ike did that by taking responsibility for leading the children’s Sabbath services and during the High Holy Days by blowing the shofar at their services.
But the highlight of my father’s involvement in our Hebrew School, as far as I was concerned, came every May, when Ike would be the organizer and main chaperone for our annual trip to a Red Sox afternoon game at Fenway Park. Those group outings were a greatly anticipated sign of spring. With games starting at 1:30 or 2 p.m., we’d get dismissed early from regular school, and we’d watch a game from seats that, pre-pandemic, cost $60 or more, but which in the early 1960s, were classified as unreserved grandstand seats that normally sold for $1.50 or less. Those were in the days before the 1967 Impossible Dream year, when every season was a losing one, but we still enjoyed the games.
Over the years, baseball played a big role in helping my Dad and I bond. Although we only attended one Opening Day, we’d inevitably get to games during April’s school vacation week and in the summer. And, well into the ’90s, I’d look forward to meeting my Dad at Fenway for night or weekend afternoon games.
Eighteen years after his death, I can’t help but thinking of what Ike --- who was born in 1918, when the Spanish Flu Pandemic started, and who survived the Great Depression and fought in World War II --- would have thought about how the country has been handling the COVID-19 pandemic.
One thing he’d probably say is that we’ll never be able to put the pandemic behind us until we demonstrate a deeper sense of cooperation instead of practically every state doing its own thing. And he’d tell us to get vaccinated when you’re eligible; he let his kids get the polio vaccine because it was the right thing to do in the late ’50s, just as it’s the right thing to get the vaccine now.
Stressing the need to work together is what I’d expect Ike, whose generation beat the Axis powers, would advise Americans in today’s bitterly divided country. He’d say it would have been nearly impossible for his generation to have won World War II if those Americans had lived in the same broken society dominated by social media’s non-stop vitriol and hate.
The accomplishments of Ike’s generation made those veterans a special breed, as they did what was expected of them. I reflected on that in the eulogy I gave at his graveside service March 16, 2003:
“Ike was an everyday hero. He did not win the Congressional Medal of Honor, but he quietly did what his country asked him to do at a time of great need. Of course, that's precisely what the generation that grew up in the Great Depression did, so it wasn't surprising that Ike joined the Navy in 1943, became a radioman and spent the rest of the war prowling the North Atlantic on a destroyer escort as the allies fought their way to victory in Europe.
“Like most World War II veterans, Ike didn't talk much about his wartime experience, even to his son, but he did occasionally reveal just enough to let you understand why he was never too rattled by the vicissitudes of everyday life in the post-war world.
“His description of reciting what Ike liked to call the ‘major league’ Yom Kippur confessional prayer, the ‘Al-Chait,’ while depth charges were going off all around him tells a lot about the man's character. He not only was a man of honor, but a man who had a healthy respect for God and was prone to talking to Him in difficult times, not unlike Tevye the fictional milkman from ‘Fiddler on the Roof.’ ”
Surviving the horrors of war helped make Ike a compassionate man who understood hardship, which is why he embraced the Jimmy Fund, the Boston Red Sox’ signature charity to raise money for the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. We couldn’t go to a game at Fenway Park without Ike dropping money into one of the park’s Jimmy Fund canisters.
Unfortunately, Ike and I never got to celebrate a Red Sox World Series victory after seeing them lose seventh games in 1967, 1975 and 1986, when the bitter Game 6 loss against the New York Mets erased a Red Sox lead in the bottom of the 10^th, just one strike away from the elusive title. But in 2004, when the Sox broke the 86-year-old Curse of the Bambino, I had no doubt Ike had played a role.
Now, 18 years after his passing, Ike’s spirit remains with me. Here’s hoping the example of his generation will help us overcome the hardships and tragic losses that we’ve been dealing with for way too long.
LARRY KESSLER (larrythek65@gmail.com) is a freelance writer based in North Attleboro. He blogs at  https://larrytheklineup.blogspot.com/