I have a really cool dad. Ask any of my friends. It’s one of the very first things you learn about me.
I always felt that way and I still do. In fact, today I feel it even more strongly than ever.
There is so much to say about this man who lived (and died) in a 27th floor Brooklyn Heights apartment with a sumptuous view of the NYC skyline he adored.
A man of many passions, including his wife Hillary, his children, grandchildren, relatives and many friends, my dad enjoyed an eclectic array of culture both high and low including painting, sculpture, literature, music of all kinds, philosophy, film, bird watching, horse racing, food, wine, the natural world and so much more. One has only to browse his huge collection of books and records to see the scope of this man’s interests and the places his mind liked to travel.
To say he was smart would be an understatement. This was a man who read almost constantly and always knew what was going on in the world, the city he loved, as well as what was going on at the museums, the Chelsea galleries, the local film houses, jazz clubs and concert halls.
A connoisseur of both the pop and the esoteric, the atonal and the swooningly harmonic, my father loved Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday, Cole Porter, George Gershwin and Duke Ellington as much as he appreciated Debussy, Bach, Schumann, Schoenberg, opera, Roland Barthes, William Butler Yeats, Martin Heidegger and Theodor Adorno.
He loved the new as much as the classic and always liked to be—no needed to be—up to date on the latest thing in the cultural zeitgeist.
But the classics were his passion and he knew his way around the Metropolitan Museum, where he loved to peruse the 19th century paintings, the ancient Chinese art and the New Greek and Roman sculpture Galleries on the first floor.
And then there were the horses.
His lifelong love of horse racing meant that he missed his own college graduation from the University of California at Berkeley so that he could watch Citation, a Triple Crown racehorse, run in nearby Golden Gate Fields. It also meant that he spent every August at Saratoga Racetrack, not far from the beautiful colonial country home in Washington County, New York he shared with Hillary.
Born to Ethel and Dewey in 1929, Monte grew up in Manhattan a smart, funny kid whose parents divorced when he was young. He lived with his mother and maternal grandparents and sometimes with his beloved Aunt Gladys and Uncle Al Luria in their palatial apartment on East 88th Street with its view of the Guggenheim and the Central Park Resevoir.
Later his parents remarried one another and they moved to LA, another city close to his heart, where my dad became an avid collector of jazz records and autographs, and a student at LA High. He graduated from the University of California at Berkeley and did graduate studies at UCLA in philosophy where he made many lifelong friends.
Returning to New York in the 1950’s, my father went to work in the mail room of an advertising agency and was soon promoted to copywriter when his talent for brilliant word-smithing was discovered. Soon after he met my mother on the island of Nantucket. They married, had twins and lived on Riverside Drive while he became creative director at Papert Koenig and Lois, an innovative advertising agency..
After PKL went out of business my father spent a couple of years pursuing his own personal projects including a screenplay about the night Henry David Thoreau spent in jail, a Thoreau calendar, an opera based on Nixon’s Checker speech, a suite of songs which can be heard on a terrific album by Bob Dorough called This Is A Recording of Pop Art with lyrics based on a weather report, a Brooks Brothers collection bill, a traffic ticket, a laundry ticket and my sister and my favorite, Webster’s dictionary definition of love. There was also the best selling book called The Couple.
Did I mention that he was a three-time winning contestant on TV’s Who, What or Where Show, probably one of the most exciting times of my life.
Later he met his second wife Hillary, whom he loved dearly. They married in 1989 and enjoyed a full and interesting life together in Brooklyn Heights, Fisher’s Island, and East Greenwich with many interests, friends, and travel to places like Death Valley, Paris, Monhegan Island, and the islands of Greece.
My father retired from advertising sometime in the early 1990’s, which gave Dad and Hillary plenty of time to enjoy their life in Brooklyn Heights and rustic East Greenwich, where they also made some wonderful friends.
In 1991, my husband Hugh, newborn Henry and I followed my father and Hillary to the borough of Kings. Living in Park Slope, it was great to live our lives in close proximity. We had so many memorable times celebrating holidays, birthdays, talking around the dinner table, and watching fireworks from their windows.
Last Fourth of July, a small group of family and neighbors gathered to watch. My dad had been sick for almost a year and it was a gift to be able to do this with him. We’d always joke that my dad was putting on a private show just for us. It really felt that way when the Grucci fireworks illuminated the sky right outside his windows. Thanks dad, we’d say, for putting on such an incredible show.
To say that my father was a huge influence on me would be another understatement.
His appreciation of music and art is inscribed in me as it is in my children. So is his love of words and his superhuman ability to come up with great copy, just the right turn of phrase, something funny, a double entendre or hard to ignore headline. (Get Your Daily Dose of Dallas). An idea man, he was revered by all who worked with him for his pitch perfect instincts and conceptual flair.
So what was it like to have such a cool dad and grandfather?
Well, my father was a good and generous man who loved his children and his grandchildren, who never forget a birthday, Halloween or Valentine’s Day card and always tried to give everyone the gift they really wanted. I can still hear him ask, “So what does Alice want for her birthday?”
He was protective in all the right ways. I was 30 before he stopped reaching for my hand when we crossed the street. And who can forget the first time I took the crosstown bus alone to school and he followed behind on his bike. And when I needed help (and boy have I needed help) he was always there).
My son Henry, now 17, adored my father and was endlessly impressed by the hilarious true stories he used to tell. For years Henry would ask why doesn’t someone do a documentary about grandpa? Why isn’t grandpa on NPR? Henry is now the repository of all those great tales. He also wears his grandfather’s shoes (as they share a shoe size) and ties.
Last week at the hospital, Hillary told me that my father wanted me to speak at his funeral. That was an honor like no other but also a huge pressure. How could I write something—anything—that would compare to what my father would say on such an occasion?
Obviously he knew that I’d work hard to convey the multi-faceted man that he was. He knew I’d try to write something worthy of him.
His wanting me to do this was his way of showing his faith in me about this most important thing that we share: the ability to turn experience into words, to find the right way to say that which is so hard to express.
He also told her that he wanted me to read a poem and that I would know which poem he meant.
Hmmmm. I was stumped. And then I felt pressure. Was it something by Yeats, Shakespeare or Frank O’Hara? I really didn’t know what poem he was talking about.
But then it came to me, he probably meant the last two pages of The House at Pooh Corner by AA Milne, a book he cherished. I read this section at my high school graduation and my father was moved to tears.
Now my sister Caroline will read it to you. It’s a beautiful passage and it sums up my father’s penchant for existential sentimentality. Thank you dad for sharing this with us and for everything else you taught us to listen to, read and see.
Don’t worry, dad. We will never ever forget you.
How could we? You are the coolest dad in the world.
