Monday, March 4, 2024
From one of his daughters, Anaya:
Jim was a sensitive, aware child. He remembered being a baby and being fed in a way that left some food on his face and clothing. He remembers thinking, “How undignified.”
He remembered light streaming down through the trees into his baby carriage and how beautiful it was.
The first time he heard a violin, he knew he wanted to play. He listened to classical music and attended many concerts throughout his youth. His closest friend and he often played ping pong, and just as often, his friend broke away to say, “I have to practice.” That was Joseph Silverstein, who became concertmaster of the Boston Philharmonic. They were 12. Joey was practicing 6 hours a day. Jim was practicing 3.
He graduated from Eastman School of Music, and received his PhD from University of Michigan. He was a concertising violinist and violist for a year after graduation, but his first love was teaching. He combined both throughout his long college teaching career.
In fact, he had a nervous illness that delayed his entry to college, and which nearly derailed his music career. It was then that he discovered the therapeutic benefit of deep relaxation, and integrated it into his playing and his life. Even at the end of life, whenever he was sitting talking with others, you could see him in deep physical relaxation. It was an antidote to a highly strung inner state. A doctor once asked him what he did for exercise. He replied, “I fidget.”
He married soon after college. He and Mary Bloom were married 66 years till her passing in 2022. Dad always felt that they were equal partners (he was a women’s-libber long before it was a thing), and they never made any major decisions without deciding together. They loved collecting beautiful art and antiques, and making their homes beautiful. They performed together - he on violin and she on piano or viola. I heard beautiful music throughout my youth, not only in our home but also at many concerts. Dad gave me violin lessons starting at 4 and I played through high school. In junior high, I attended college orchestra rehearsals when he was conducting, and was permitted to play in the back (way in the back) of the 2nd violin section.
Jim created an environment of complete freedom for his children to develop as we were inclined. There were walls of books to explore. We were free to grow naturally in our interests.
Jim served as chairman of the music department at Mansfield University and University of Western Illinois. He was often head of the teachers’ union as well. Standing up to an injustice on behalf of another faculty member invited retribution from higher-ups; it cost him his job at his favorite university. That was a great sacrifice on behalf of dharma.
In his later years, he started a publishing company with Mary, and published many books over the course of 30 years. They retired in their mid-80s. The publishing company was a gift to my mother, who had great energy for running a business but needed his back-end help to make it happen. He stayed current with technology until his passing, but very reluctantly. He was an 18th century Enlightenment man by temperament. If he could have used a quill pen, he would have.
Jim's nature was calm, dispassionate, and thoughtful. I don’t remember ever seeing him show any anger, even under the greatest duress. He made an excellent faculty chairman for that reason. Academic institutions are volatile places and professors can be a nearly impossible group to placate. He simply couldn’t be moved from his calm center. He was reelected to the position year after year. No one else could imagine taking the abuse. He hardly noticed.
I asked him soon after Mary passed how he managed to be this way, no matter what life threw at him. He replied, “Many years ago, I realized that being happy was a choice. I chose to be happy.”
He had great powers of concentration. He spent 10 years writing his PhD thesis a little bit every night after a long day of teaching. When he finished, he had developed such a good habit, he decided to keep rolling, and spent more years writing a textbook called A History of Music Education in the United States, a classic text for the field for decades. He kept a daily diary throughout life, up to the last few days.
In my youth, we gathered around the dinner table for conversations about how our days went. When dinner was over, we all retired to different parts of the house to do our homework, in Dad’s case to continue writing. His concentration rubbed off on us.
He was a life-long learner. Because he’d had to concentrate on violin so intensely as a youth, he didn’t attend the normal range of classes most students do. His education was narrow and deep in that field. So as an adult, he felt he’d missed out on a broader education. He more than made up for it. He made a deep study of American history, philosophy, psychology, and eastern philosophy. He took Great Courses in astronomy, Spanish, and the ancient history of Israel even in his last 2 years of life.
He began to seriously practice the piano in the last few years. He’d played some when he was younger, but never practiced. The violin was increasingly hard to play, so he shifted over and began practicing up to 2 hours a day on the piano. He watched videos by great pianists on how to practice. His technical skills improved rapidly. Everything that he learned, he also memorized. He had memorized several Chopin waltzes and a Mozart sonata in the course of a year, and was playing them beautifully.
He always had a great sense of humor. That was a hallmark of his personality. Unfortunately, he also had a great memory. So we had to work hard to come up with new jokes. Even in his last two months, I read him a few jokes and paused before the end; he was easily able to fill in most of the punch lines.
After Mary passed in 2022, he explored spirituality more. “As you might imagine, my interest is greater now, the closer I come to my end.” Reflecting on his life, he felt there was a Spirit guiding his life that one might call an angel. It was something he felt increasingly as he came to the end, and in the last few months, spoke more openly about it.
He was a refined person. He never, in my hearing, used a swear word, or misspoke. He never said anything unkind about someone. Even two weeks before his death, he started to say something about a former colleague who had done something inappropriate. His hands accidentally covered the microphone so I didn’t hear what he was saying. I said, “What?” He said, “My Spirit didn’t want me to say something negative about this person, and blocked my microphone. I’ll take the hint.”
He was curious and open about dying. He didn't shrink from any of it. It was important to him to document and share everything along the way as he was declining, so we could learn from him what he was experiencing. He had a remarkable lack of fear. A few things he shared in the last week:
• He was feeling the pull of the other world from behind him. Seeing many faces "there" but not recognizing any of them.
• He was also feeling the pull of the material world - he felt it's like standing "on a bridge" between the two.
• He felt that the material and the spiritual worlds exist in the same plane of existence, but that we don't generally perceive them in that way. Now he was feeling that more profoundly.
• He passed away whispering Judi’s name, and then moving his lips as if speaking to someone whom we couldn’t see. Many people say that when near death, we see those who have passed before us, welcoming us to the other side. Perhaps he joined the heavenly orchestra.
