Steve Maurer started writing annual letters in 1973; I (Fran Stier) joined in starting 1982, when we got married. Until this year, ten years’ or so of letters lived on his Swarthmore website, but of course our access to that website ended when Steve died. So I built this (with a little help from sons and a friend of a friend).
About Steve, November 2020
Steve’s Parkinson’s has progressed to where his speech is hard to understand. He used to be able to dictate to Dragon on his laptop and then correct by hand, but that’s gotten harder and harder. He’s written annual letters starting in 1973 (I joined since 1982). I kept kid diaries (now transcribed) starting 1986 & sent out a weekly burbagram starting around 1996. So why write more? Not everyone will read 46 years of annuals or 1,000+ pp of burbagrams. What follows, of course, is as much about me as about him.
He loved math and he loved teaching math to all kinds of kids – young ones, very strong students, students who struggled. If someone got a problem wrong, he tried to figure out how they had been thinking about the problem, to know what needed to be explained. He taught pre-calculus to the Swarthmore kids who needed the most help, encouraging them to work the problem sets in groups. He taught middle- school kids at MathPath for 17 summers, running the camp for the last 7 or so years. He’d teach linear algebra as a seminar to the Swarthmore students with the strongest math backgrounds.
The seminar students would come over for dinner at the end of the semester – they were delightful. At the seminar dinner for the last time Steve taught, they all wore t-shirts inscribed, on the front “I should have started farther”, and on the back, “left”.
I met Steve in Nov 1976 – I was visiting home from doing fieldwork in Panama after my father died. Some neighbors took me on a Sierra Club hike to Greenwood Lake, NJ. Steve said he heard me talking about Indians in Panama, and dropped to talk with me. When I learned he taught math, I said I’d never been able to understand delta-epsilon proofs as a freshman – he said most first-year courses didn’t include them anymore. After the hike, I asked could he show my sister Beth, who was looking at colleges that year, around Princeton. He said this was a transparent ruse to get his phone number. I disagree.
Until just before we got married, we never lived in the same place. Steve moved from Princeton (where he was an assistant Master & professor, and where he’d attended grad school) to a tenure-track position at Swarthmore (where he’d been an undergrad) in 1979. I moved from Panama to Tucson in 1977 where I finished my PhD, to West Lafayette IN in 1979 as visiting asst, to Abidjan, Ivory Coast in 1980 as a contractor for USAID, (Steve proposed when I was on home-leave in 1981), and from Abidjan to Swarthmore in 1982.
We wrote letters, mostly by hand, for those 6 years. We argued, when sending a letter and getting a response could take a couple of weeks. We broke up many times – I remember telling my Mom Steve and I had broken up, and her response was “Again?” The only time I used the phone in my apartment in Abidjan was to respond to Steve’s proposal – he had insisted I think about it for 3 months.
The first time I visited him in Princeton, Steve talked about how, when he was a kid, he’d sit on the stairs, listening to his parents fight, mostly about money.
Steve’s parents (part 1): Steve’s father, Ely, was a lawyer in the State Department who played a role in restoring art looted by the Nazis to its rightful owners. (Ely had graduated first in his class at NYU & wanted to be a classics professor, but was advised there was too much prejudice against Jews in academia, so he got a law degree at Columbia).
Steve’s mother, Lucy was at home when he was young, then served on the Montgomery County School Board, then was appointed to the state legislature in 1969 (as a result of Spiro Agnew’s being chosen for VP), then was elected State Treasurer in 1987. So, for the first 24 years of their marriage, Ely had a salary and Lucy didn’t.
Steve believed that both married people should have some money they controlled individually, and that both should have a voice in how “joint” funds that supported the household and children. For maybe 34 years of our marriage, he prepared meticulous quarterly settlements of what “Steve”, “Fran”, and “Joint” owed each other. (He did this even before spreadsheets existed, with pencil and paper). The system worked.
Looking at these old pictures of Steve’s parents, especially his Dad, I’m struck by how happy they look together and much like his Dad Steve looks. By the time I got to know them a little, there were endless disagreements. Ely didn’t want Lucy to buy a new car (with her legislative salary), and didn’t talk to her for months after she did. Ely didn’t want Lucy to remodel the kitchen in Silver Spring (she never did).
The first time Steve took me to his house, he went straight to the kitchen to show me a wrench on the faucet (that had been there many years), and then took me to the basement to see a pyramid of tires that didn’t fit any car they owned (another source of contention).
Steve and brothers: The births of Steve, Russ, and Ed were spaced 3 years apart so only 2 would be in college at any one time.
On weekend mornings, Ely would wake them quoting Housman:
Clay lies still, but blood's a rover; Breath's a ware that will not keep. Up, lad: when the journey's over There'll be time enough to sleep.
They’d visit the library and go on adventures.
In the summer, Ely would take the family on long trips– driving across the US when Ed was a baby (I couldn’t imagine the logistics of diapers and formula). He pulled Steve (then in 3rd grade) & Russ out of school for two weeks to drive to Florida in early December, to avoid peak-season hotel rates. They visited European capitals, Israel and Mexico (no one but Ely wanted to go – he quoted Lincoln “Seven no’s and one aye – the aye’s have it”).
School: Ely persuaded Steve’s school to move Steve from 4th to 5th grade in the middle of the year. Steve remembers being embarrassed to be singled out; he was relieved to be in Jr. High school the next year, where no one knew his history.
Steve learned Hebrew from an itinerant teacher – he still has his primer and the student Hebrew-English Bible he studied from.
For a Jr. High science project, Steve did huge numbers of trigonometry calculations to make a star chart for Washington DC (38 ˚ 53” north) – his teacher thought he had brought in a purchased star chart and gave him a C. A fellow-student persuaded Steve to explain to the teacher that he’d constructed the chart himself – star charts didn’t exist for DC’s latitude. The teacher laughed, and changed the grade to an A.
He scored 17th on the 1966 Putnam Exam, and 1st in North America on the Part 1 exam of the Society of Actuaries. He graduated from Swarthmore with Highest Honors and Phi Beta Kappa.
He started grad school in math 1967-1969, and left to teach math at Phillips Exeter Academy 1969-1971. He returned to grad school to finish his degree in 1972, and then returned to Exeter to teach another year.
After a year as a Post-Doc at University of Waterloo, in Canada, he returned to Princeton 1974-1979.
Avocations: Steve loves the schools where he studied and taught – Swarthmore, Princeton, and Exeter. He loved squash (which he learned as a grad student at Princeton), gardening, hiking (from the Outing Club at Exeter), and writing math and long annual letters (every year since 1973) about travel, work and (one year) the cockroaches that infested his Swarthmore apartment.
Steve kept a garden most years in Princeton and Swarthmore, growing tomatoes, beans, squash, hot peppers, and okra, that he made into a spicy vegetable stew. He loved identifying the bugs that were eating his crops, and was very particular about what kind of black plastic to use as mulch.
Housework, Leon, and Aaron: Steve always did the laundry, ever since we were married. He wrote an equal division of family labor into our (non-traditionally Jewish) marriage contract, and lived up to it. He took care of Leon when I returned to work after 3 months home. When, a couple months later, Leon started with a babysitter, Leon wouldn’t take a bottle from her, and Steve had to go over a couple times a day to feed him. Steve was the first male faculty member at Swarthmore to take parental leave (in 1989, when Aaron was born).
I was an actuarial student then – a very 9 to 5 job (with exams to study for at night and on weekends). Working from home was unheard-of. The Family and Medical Leave Act wasn’t passed until 1993. To stay home with Aaron for 3 months meant I was terminated and then rehired. Year-end financial reporting meant 6-day work-weeks.
Steve filled in the gaps. When kids were sick, he made a nest for them under his desk during office hours. He helped set up a computer room with math enrichment at the kids’ school (1991-2000, altogether). He drove kids to Cub Scouts, Boy Scouts, Hebrew school and orthodontist’ appointments. (I’d guiltily joke I felt like Woody Allen, who couldn’t name his kids’ dentists).
Both Leon & Aaron were slow to learn to read, and struggled with writing (which meant OT, tutoring, and more driving). Neither ever learned cursive.
Aaron commented, “whenever we learned some piece of math at school which we talked about over the dinner table, he’d pull out a pen from his pocket and start teaching us some expansion of it on a paper napkin”.
Almost every year, we’d hold Thanksgiving and two Seders for Pesach. We’d argue over how many verses of the after-dinner songs to sing, and whether to sing his family’s tune for Who Knows One or mine.
Steve’s parents (part 2): Lucy was elected to 3 4-year terms as State Treasurer of Maryland. In 1992, she had been diagnosed with a meningioma, which metastasized. She had two seizures in the summer of 1995 (in the first year of her third term), which left her with motor and cognitive deficits, unable to write or remember number facts.
For a long time, Ely didn’t think she should resign as Treasurer – in spite of articles in the Baltimore Sun about her disability. Once she resigned, Ely resisted efforts to adapt their home to keep her safe. He was always convinced the next treatment (RU 486, acupuncture, whatever) would cure her if she tried harder. Steve, Russ, and Ed all tried to make her more comfortable and improve her plan of care. Steve (who lived closest) visited every couple of weeks to pay bills, fight with insurers, talk to home health aides, make house repairs. She died at home, June 17th 1996, aged 73.
Ely struggled on, and died at his desk in the State Department June 25, 1997, aged 84. Steve wrote:
My feelings about Father are complex. While my Mother was a good mother and a fine person, who rose almost as high as she deserved (too bad she wasn’t born 20 years later), I think of my Father as a tragic hero—a brilliant man (first in his class, and more) who could have succeeded so much better, at home and at work, were it not for tragic flaws. This weighs on me because, of his three sons, I am the most like him, including the flaws.
Marriage: There is a Jewish legend that ever since creation, God has been busy arranging marriages. I used to tease Steve (an agnostic, who identifies as Jewish) that our marriage was proof to me that God existed.
Steve and I seldom fought about money, but we fought about time a lot. At year-end, on weekends, I’d buy Looney-Tunes videos, bring Leon and Aaron to work (they loved the train ride) and stick them in a conference room at work with a VCR.
When kids were young, we discussed sabbaticals. Swarthmore gave sabbaticals every 3 years, and the expectation was to travel to some overseas university. When I met the Swarthmore provost on the street when Steve was on leave, he asked me: Why are you here? I explained that I had a job. Other wives quit their jobs to accompany their husbands, he pointed out.
Not that our marriage was idyllic – we did couples therapy in the late 1990’s and again around 2004. A sample disagreement – Steve wanted a square foot of pegboard where he liked to rest his head to be kept clear of spatulas. I wanted equivalent pegboard space elsewhere but Steve didn’t want to cover any more of the lovely orange wall. Our therapist made a house call to look at the space in question. Finally, Leon suggested covering a cabinet side (white) in pegboard, saving our marriage.
We figured out how to travel together – Steve would plot the itinerary; I’d pick the lodgings. He could drive on the left fearlessly, and remember 4-5 turns in sequence (I almost never drove in the UK, and needed to be fed turns one by one). No Google Maps for us; we mostly used a non-smart phone service based in Latvia (?). Our most ambitious trip – which required extensive planning on Steve’s part — was in 2012 to explore family roots in Ukraine and Poland, along with Russ’ and Ed’s families.
Work: Steve’s CV (from 2012, so 5 years before retiring) is 12 pages long. He taught at Swarthmore 1979 to 2017, with stints as a Program Officer for the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation (1982-1984), acting chair (1992) and Associate Provost for IT (2000-2003). He was math department chair 2004 – 2011 (with a break 2007-2008, see below).
He chaired the MAA committee on high school competitions 1981-1987. His textbook “Discrete Algorithmic Mathematics” was published 1991, with two subsequent editions. He helped our school district develop a linear algebra course (2003).
MathPath: Steve first taught at MathPath, a camp for middle-school kids who loved math, in 2003. It became a labor of love and a year-round involvement. He became Academic Director in 2006, and took on grading the admissions quiz in 2007. The camp’s financial state was precarious in 2008 – he worked on increasing the number of campers and cutting costs. By 2010, the camp was almost debt-free. He became Executive Director in 2014 and, by the time he had to retire in 2019, it had a healthy endowment.
Empty Nest-dom: Leon and Aaron got huge and hairy and learned to drive. Leon started at Dartmouth in 2004, graduated in 2008, and moved to Madison WI for grad school in physics. Aaron started at Carleton in 2007, graduated in 2011, moved to San Francisco, and worked as a consultant at Acumen. The house seemed far, far quieter. Steve finally got to take some sabbaticals in Europe, at European College of Liberal Arts in Berlin now run by Bard in 2007 and 2012. He spent his weekends traveling all over Germany by train.
Continuing Care Retirement Communities (CCRCs) and Kendal: Continuing Care Retirement Communities have independent-living apartments, personal-care rooms, and a skilled-nursing section. I’d studied them as an actuarial student. A resident pays a fee on entry that is held as a reserve to theoretically cover the increased cost of personal care or skilled nursing care when it is needed, in addition to a monthly fee for residential expenses. Kendal was founded by the Society of Friends in the 1970’s, and about 30% of residents are Quaker. We got on the wait-list around 2017 (after visiting many CCRCs in the area), spent a couple of years downsizing our possessions and fixing up 206 Benjamin West, and entered Kendal in August of 2019. (The house sold within a couple of days of getting on the market).
Parkinson’s: Steve first wrote about his left hand shaking in our 2011 annual letter. His Parkinson’s was diagnosed in 2012 – the neurologist thought it would probably progress slowly. For the next couple of years, it was mostly a nuisance that slowed down his typing – he was also having trouble with back pain. In the month at MathPath in the summer of 2015 he developed camptocormia: his stance bent over to the right. He started to use a rollator to walk.
His hand tremors had also worsened – he decided on Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS) surgery in January of 2017. There were trade-offs as they calibrated the device – upping the voltage reduced the tremors, but made his voice thinner, but overall the DBS helped — Steve could “read, watch a movie, hold a conversation, eat dinner, drive the car, and sleep at night without being constantly distracted by tremors.”
In April 2019, after attending a lecture on campus, Steve fell in a Swarthmore College parking lot and broke his right acetabulum (the socket that holds the femur in place). A surgeon at Penn Presbyterian who specialized in broken acetabula repaired the break with many titanium screws, and Steve rehabbed at Kendal, where we planned to move. By November, however, the hip joint was painfully arthritic, and had to be replaced (by a different Penn Presbyterian surgeon who specialized in replacing femurs in previously-broken hip joints).
No sooner had he rehabbed from the hip replacement, it seemed, than he had a series of falls from orthostatic hypotension (his blood pressure dropped when he stood up, another Parkinson’s effect) that landed him in various local and not-so-local hospitals, followed by COVID-19 (we never figured out the source) in October 2020.
COVID and lock-down: (adding to this in Nov 2025). Steve’s COVID was treated in Chester County hospital, then in Kendal’s skilled nursing unit, in a jury-rigged negative-pressure room with noisy fans. He was Kendal’s first COVID case.
Inga, Leon and Genya’s daughter, was born on Halloween – of course, I couldn’t travel to meet her.
It was the depths of lock-down – we in Independent Living were mostly confined to our cottages, with food and mail delivered.
He wrote in our 2020 Annual of his life in skilled nursing (he dictated, then edited my transcription)
I read (on Kindle) and watch movies. Last year, I wrote and helped grade the admissions quiz for MathPath, which was successfully held online. For
this coming summer I have mostly bowed out. I used to do problems from the website Brilliant, but I hardly do them anymore. Anything that is complicated is too hard to say or write (worse than I described last year) so I don’t try anymore except on very special occasions like this,. Since I can’t communicate them, maybe I’ll stop thinking things that are complicated, too. My attention span for long pieces and articles has also gone down. I guess this is how Parkinsion’s has affected my intellect so far: my stamina for intellectual things has decreased. Sad but true.
This is probably the last year I’ll write for the annual.
When the COVID vaccine came to Kendal (1/8/2021) for skilled nursing,
there was some suspense because Kendal’s Medical Director’s organization (Main Line Health) doesn’t think the vaccine should be given to people who’ve been diagnosed with COVID within the last 90 days. Steve was diagnosed 10/9/2020 (our anniv). Much back-and-forth and waiting ensued. However, Steve had worked out in his head that 10/9/2020 was 91 days ago. Eventually, he got vaccinated.
I hurried out to Madison to meet Inga in late February, as soon as I’d been vaccinated. Leon and Genya carry her up and down the stairs over & over to put her to sleep. I couldn’t do that. But it was lovely to sing to her, wave her caterpillar toy over her head, go for walks with her.
My mother fell in early March, fracturing her femur – the trauma team at NY Presbyterian repaired the break – Beth was with her. She was moved to a rehab place on the Upper East side. I hurried up as soon as I was back from WI – scurrying to get COVID tests so I could visit.
Through the spring, Steve had more trouble walking and speaking. I wrote in my diary
Had I said that S & I both read Diane Rehm’s When my Time Comes – her husband had advanced Parkinson’s and stopped eating and drinking for 10 days to die – even in states that allow medically assisted death, someone needs a terminal diagnosis to receive aid to die. Parkinson’s is not a terminal disease.
He wrote to his care team:
My body is going downhill fairly rapidly. every week it seems I can name something specific that is worse than the week before. I wonder if my Parkinon’s has morphed into Multiple Systems
Atrophe, MSA, A Parkinsonian diease with an even worse prognosis, which progresses much faster. If so, that could help explain why my PT, OT and ST have had so little lasting effect. No amount of exercise would have made much difference.
With my fast progression, it may not be long until I am wheelchair bound or even bedridden. How should we prepare ourselves for these possibilities?
Steve Maurer
Steve developed bedsores and staff took him to Bryn Mawr rehab, possibly for a new motorized wheelchair that would fit him better (he’d bought his 2nd hand) but Steve was reluctant to spend much on a new chair.
6/4/2021: Not a great week. The control panel on Steve’s motorized wheelchair (from 2011; he bought it 2nd hand) broke when it ran into a table, and the next day the wheelchair stopped working. The team at Bryn Mawr Rehab is doing a quote for a custom made motorized wheelchair, but that quote has been delayed, and the wheelchair won’t be ready for many weeks. Until the current chair is fixed (if, indeed, it can be fixed) Steve’s relegated to a manual chair, which means he has to wait for someone to wheel him here and there.
And, of course, Steve is attached to his old wheelchair; he’s not enthusiastic about getting a new one.
7/18/2021 Steve had a urinary tract infection & is on antibiotics. He has more trouble than before sitting upright and steering his wheelchair. The new wheelchair is still not authorized – the vendor has been slow to reply to Steve’s questions.
In early August I caught my foot on the tie of a trash bag of yard waste, fell, and broke my pubic ramus bone. I was able to walk with a walker once the ER staff fed me an oxycodone, so I was returned to the Crosslands skilled nursing (Kendal’s was closed for COVID), and then moved home, with help from Kendal’s homecare aides.
8/14/2021: Steve was fading by Friday – I spoonfed him supper and Saturday’s lunch. His blood oxygen levels were falling – Kendal did an x-ray Sat afternoon, which didn’t show anything, and then Saturday evening they called the EMT’s to take him to Chester County Hospital, for aspiration pneumonia.
Aaron drove up today to take me to see Steve (I can’t drive yet) – he’s better. Getting 2 liters of O2, down from 5 last night. Negative for COVID. They’re giving him steroids and antibiotic, but his lab levels are relatively low for an infection.
8/20/2021: The hospital did swallowing tests on Steve on Monday & Tuesday, and found he was aspirating a lot with each swallow, so the pneumonia was going to recur. They (the hospitalist physician’s asst [PA]) said we had to decide either for Steve to get a peg tube into his stomach, or else go into hospice care, recognizing the risk of pneumonia. We talked with a social worker from the palliative care team.
Wednesday, we met with a hospice nurse from Willow Tree (the for-profit hospice that Kendal mostly works with), who talked with Steve in detail, and then the physician assistant for the GI team, who was very upbeat about the benefits of peg tubes (your body is like a car; you need fuel). A pro-peg pulmonologist wandered in while the GI PA was there, but otherwise the discussion was all among PA’s.
Steve wanted to go back to the status quo ante – return to Kendal and act as if the swallowing tests hadn’t happened and see how things went. But that wasn’t possible. So he decided for hospice. He said I was v bossy during the discussion.
8/22/2021: He was discharged on Thursday, and mid-afternoon a hospice nurse came and enrolled him. Until the hospice nurse came, he couldn’t have regular (unthickened) liquids or eat anything. The hospice nurse authorized him to drink and eat “for comfort” as he wanted. He’s on a mechanically softened diet – not pureed. So he gets a lot of egg salad and tuna salad, applesauce, juices.
He’d wanted Cheez-its, so I’d ordered a box on Amazon. I dole them out one at a time, the way we feed Inga Cheerios. In 2 days, maybe he’s had 10 of the tiny crackers.
8/28/2021: I was going in for lunch and dinner, spoon feeding Steve a little of this and that (he’d whisper what he wanted a spoonful of.
Hospice nurses came and examined him, not saying much.
But Tuesday, the main, regular hospice nurse came & said Steve was very fragile and family that wanted to see him should come ASAP. She said that feeding Steve was probably exacerbating the aspiration pneumonia. Aimee Johnson (Swat dept head) came by – we chatted, relatively comfortably. Steve, slumped over, couldn’t participate much, was distantly conscious. I left maybe at 6 to get supper.
Two other colleagues planned to visit Thurs.
I worried some next morning, went to see Steve around 9 AM. He was lying down, breathing with effort, unconscious. Russ arrived mid-morning – we talked – I kept holding Steve’s hand, hoping that was helpful for him. His blood oxygen saturation was 74 – I was texting updates to Aaron & Alex, who were driving up. The hospice nurse had gotten orders for Steve to get morphine every hour as needed. He died around noon. I was so glad Russ was there. He’s such a comfortable bear of a man.
9/2/2021: I called Rabbi G to see if we could have the funeral Sunday morning and a shiva call over zoom & in person at the cottage – that worked. I called Goldstein’s (the funeral home). I talked to the synagogue office to determine what available burial plots were closest to the road. I wrote an obituary for the Kendal website.
Aaron got onto S’s laptop, found the distribution list Steve used for his annual letter, merged it with my lists, and sent out a notice. Over the next days, there were 50+ replies, from childhood friends, college friends, colleagues, students – long emails.
Aaron came back up Thursday, and we sat around. He suggested ordering some flowers, so I did. We went out & had a very expensive sushi dinner.
Aaron & I talked to Rabbi G abt Steve Friday – I sent him the piece I’d written abt Steve in Nov.
Leon arrived in the US Thursday evening at JFK, spent the night at Ed & Eileen’s took Amtrak down to 30th st. and an Uber out to Media, where Aaron drove me to get a haircut because I didn’t want to look like a sheep dog at the funeral. We had lunch together at Margaret Kuo’s.
They had a great time rummaging through Steve’s memorabilia and other folders. E.g. the outfit that sold Steve gems (before we got married) was convicted of deceptive practices by the FTC. Phillips Exeter created a teaching job for Steve the summer he was almost drafted so he could get an exemption. Steve wrote a fake letter to Nancy B purporting to be from the Chamber of Commerce of Zap ND 50 yrs ago.
I’d sent L & A links to videos on the kaddish & copies of the text. On Saturday, (so Shabbat, so I couldn’t email Rabbi G) Leon noted there were extra words in the text I’d sent that weren’t in the video. I looked at the burial service in my (Orthodox) Birnbaum siddur, and found a whole extra paragraph (in Aramaic) that I couldn’t begin to say, and wrote to Rose & Helen in a panic – what text was the Rabbi going to use, and would I make a fool of myself?? I emailed Helen & Rose, who reassured me that Rabbi G would almost certainly use the mourner’s Kaddish that’s said in services.
Family was gathering Sat night. Russ & Kathy (quite reasonably) wanted to eat outside. The Kennett Sq restaurant I found on Yelp by searching for Outdoor Dining was fine, thank heavens – the weather was cool and the rain held off, thank heavens. State St. in Kennett Sq is pretty – everyone arrived in time (I think we were 13). I’d always wanted to eat out in Kennett Sq.
Funeral eulogies are here: Leon, Aaron, Russ & Ed & the Rabbi all spoke well. A good number of people came to the funeral – maybe 50-80? The burial service – they used a trowel instead of a shovel. Alexia & Imam Haneef both came to the funeral & burial. Elayne & Sherry had put together a lunch of bagels, smoked fish, pastries. There was WAY too much food – two huge fish trays. It was so good to sit and talk and decompress with them. L & A loaded my rollator, a fish tray & a bagel tray & a pastry tray into my Subaru and we came back to Kendal.
Carole S. drove into Phila to get good bagels & cream cheese for the Shiva. Sheila D brought sweets trays. There was, of course, WAY too much food.
The Zoom & in-person Shiva was a collaboration between Kendal’s zoom team & Rabbi G – John Bennett had all kinds of questions to ask and points to raise. Aaron set his laptop up and hooked up the TV so that people physically in the room could see the screen easily. It went well – there were 100+ attendees on the Zoom and many tributes. And I was glad it was a Jewish gathering. Kendalites are kind and considerate but so goyishe.
Everyone left the next morning. Alex, bless her, took apart the fish tray and Aaron threw it out.