On the day my father died I cried. But I also sat sort of stunned. "So this is the day," I thought to myself. And then, I had to smile as not one, but two ironic realizations dawned. 1) It was Labor Day weekend, and Bernard Fieger was, if nothing else, an attorney who stood in staunch defense of labor unions; and 2) The Temptations had been telling me for years "the day that my daddy would die." Well timed, Bernie. Well timed.
As much as the specter of this day had haunted me, once it had arrived I learned, for the first time, a truth about losing someone you love. Their physical presence is only part of the equation -- and possibly not even the most important part. My father still exists in my mind and heart just as vividly as if he were standing right next to me. When necessary I can still hear his voice in my ear. And right now, if he were to read this, his voice would be saying, "Horseshit!"
He was not sentimental and he enjoyed his privacy.
So, horseshit aside, in honor of the 26th Anniversary of The Temptations Being Right, and Labor Day, somewhat indulgently, I am going to publish the eulogy that was given him by his brother-in-law, my uncle, June's brother, Walter E. Oberer. It's a classic in Fieger lore and deserves to be preserved... if only digitally. Read it, or don't. I'm certain Bernard Fieger wouldn't care either way:
Bernie Fieger and I were young together. Coming out of the service in 1946, we both discovered the GI Bill of Rights and found ourselves, miraculously, at the Harvard Law School. The miracle was economic. Uncle Sam was putting us through law school.
The overwhelming majority of our class was ex-GI. We went to class in motley ex-GI attire -- khakis, olive-drab. The true Harvardians, over in "the Yard," let us know, early on, that we were outlanders -- under dressed, tolerated, but just barely. we were a kind of foreign legion in the league of Ivy.
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| Class of '45 |
As chance would have it, Bernie and I sat next to one another in the first-year class in Torts. Our professor, Warren Seavey, was the epitome of Socrates. If you asked him what time it was, he would answer, "What time do you think it is?" By way of footnote, a later actor in Bernie's and my Detroit affairs, Walter Reuther, would have answered the question of what time it was by telling you how a watch is made.
Under the aegis of Professor Seavey, Bernie and I became acquainted. After each Torts class, we would ask each other such questions as, "Well, what time do you think it is?" In other words, we sharpened minds against one another. which was, of course, Professor Seavey's whole game plan.
One night in 1947, lawyer Lee Pressman, then General Counsel of the CIO came to the Harvard Law School to speak on the subject of the then brand-new Taft-Hartley Act. My sister, June -- my lovely and wonderfully bright sister June -- was by then also in Cambridge, working for a publishing company. This provided the setting for one of the most significant contributions of my life. I asked June to go with me to the Pressman lecture.
The lecture was held in the Harvard Mott Courtroom, a huge hall seating hundreds of people. The hall was packed. June and I were lucky to get seats. Dean Erwin Griswold introduced Lee Pressman to the large audience. In so doing, he said that he, the Dean, found himself somewhere between Senator Robert Taft, co-sponsor of the Taft-Hartley Act, and Lee Pressman, General Counsel of the CIO. Pressman's opening response was that the Dean had a lot of room to move around in between Pressman and Taft.
It was a stimulating evening, but the acme was not reached until the conclusion, when, as God would have it, June and I were fed out of our row of seats into an aisle at the same time Bernie Fieger was fed into the aisle from the opposite side. I introduced them and within a matter of weeks they were married.
It was not a marriage made in Heaven. Are there any? But, measured by the quality of the relationships developed and the family which resulted, all parties involved have manifested their championship caliber. Bernie had an enviable career at the bar. And he talked often of his pride in the accomplishments of his family. June, recently retired, was a star agent for the American Federation of Teachers and its Michigan affiliate. Geoffrey, the oldest son, a lawyer, already has several million dollar judgments in his trophy case. Douglas, the second son, organized the rock group, The Knack, and already has, among his trophies, a No.1 long-playing record, Get The Knack, and a No.1 single, "My Sharona." Beth, the youngest, has begun to establish herself as a writer with publications in national magazines.
The success of the children is, in my marveling judgment, the product not merely of genes, but, more deeply of the remarkably strong sense of self-worth that Bernie and June imparted.
I cannot conclude without commenting upon a fact of Bernie Fieger's life achievement that I believe to be the most profound of all. The ultimate challenge of life is to learn enough from it to be able to grow old and die with grace. Bernie, confronted for years with the debilitation of of diabetes, was simply noble in confronting that test, supported with matching nobility by his wife. As Geoff, his son, once put it, "He is indomitable."
On reflection, he had that quality in the law school classroom of our youth. In helping to uphold the student end of the classroom dialogue, he was not always right, but usually audacious. In answer to Professor Seavey's prodding question, "What time do you think it is?," Bernie at the end would have answered, "It's time to go home." Which is where he is --
Home free.
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