Now in Florida with Ed Reich who, if he makes it to February 25, will be 102. Dad doesn't talk much now and he cant' walk, but he said this morning he "wants to have more fun," so we're about to take him to the mall.
I haven't told him about what's happening in American politics – about the hate mongering of Trump and other Republicans – because it would only upset him. When I was a boy he told me about Father Charles Coughlin, the 1930s radio host and Nazi sympathizer who spewed anti-Semitism over the airwaves, and about how America refused entry to Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany. He told me how the college he attended maintained a strict quota on the number of Jews it admitted, and how the community he moved into when I was an infant had property covenants banning Jews (when some of the elders told him he and his family weren't welcome he told them to go to hell). Ed Reich hated bigotry in all its forms – he detested Senator Joe McCarthy and Governor George Wallace. He hated the know-nothings, segregationists, homophobes, and anti-Semites who sullied America. Now that he's approaching 102 and wants to have more fun, I don't want to tell him how little progress we've made.
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