To My Dad – May 15, 2014 – with Love

Thank you everyone for coming. On behalf of my sisters Sue and Judi, our mom Ethel, our spouses Charlie John and Lisa, all 9 grandchildren, and my dad’s brother Merwin, we appreciate your honoring Sid by being here today.

Many of you knew my Dad in many different contexts – some as a relative, some as a friend, some as a teacher, mentor, or colleague. Virtually everyone here knows the list of his professional accomplishments: a professor at Yale for more than 50 years; author or coauthor of more than 220 papers and 17 books; my Dad wrote on psychology, art history, and current events; he held distinguished visiting professorships at universities around the world; he mentored scores of graduate and post-graduate students; and received too many awards to list. He was a giant in his field – what we’d call a 5-tool player – an incredibly talented researcher, writer, teacher, mentor, and therapist. Of the five, his students were his top priority. They were family to him, and his relationships with his students and former students were a source of enormous joy. He immensely valued the collaborations he continued to have with his students after they became professors themselves, and he so appreciated the celebrations that his former students put together for him over the years.

But, what I’d really like to talk about today is my Dad as a person and as a father.

When my sisters and I spoke earlier this week with the rabbi about our father, he told us that he had talked with my Dad over the past year about many things, including my mom and us kids. And then he said, unsolicited: “Your father was a complicated man.” That is a very apt description of my Dad. In some ways, he was a man of great contradictions. For all his accomplishments, he was deeply insecure. I recall him telling me decades ago about his professional insecurities, that he sometimes doubted he was good enough to be a Yale professor, not good enough to merit the recognition he was receiving, that someone one day