A Dream Denied, A Vision Unfulfilled

Mick said dad probably was dead by the time he hit the floor. The doctors said it was a heart attack.

Mom remembered he had gone to the bathroom to put on his shoes when she heard him fall. There was nothing she nor Mick, a neighbor who she had summoned, could do.

It made no sense. The man was only 67. Unlike his father, who in the early 1900s owned a tobacco shop on Milwaukee’s West Side and smoked half the inventory every week—he died of a massive heart attack in his mid-80s—dad neither smoked nor drank. He even bragged that at his last physical some months earlier, his internist concluded he was ‘good for another 10,000 miles.’

I flew from the East Coast for the funeral. The day was overcast with occasional bouts of rain; even the heavens mourned the loss of a man who, for the 31 years he was married to our mother, sought truth and knowledge, and provided an environment for our family that was filled with love, learning, and music.

My mother asked me, the eldest, to go through the den and either pack things for storage if they were worth saving or contribute them to charity. The task was daunting. Dad was a pack-rat. Most of what he amassed over the years were snippets from The Milwaukee Journal or Milwaukee Sentinel plus articles torn from various sports magazines that featured stories about the Milwaukee Braves and its players. There was little value in keeping these items, and I was able to clean out the greater part of them in a few hours. It was his collection of phonograph records that presented a major problem. It comprised hundreds of LPs, EPs, singles, 12-inch singles, and 78 RPM records stored all over the den, on the floor, in boxes, on shelves, on the two end tables . . . wherever dad could find space. Virtually every violinist on the 20th century was represented, from Auer to Huberman and from Heifetz to Oistrakh. What a pity, I thought.  I should find a good home for them. In the end, I decided to take them to Good Will, something that clearly would require several trips using my rental car.

It wasn’t until after lunch that I got down on the floor and looked under the couch. There I spotted a green cardboard box previously hidden from my view. Worn around the edges and soiled on top by what appeared to be a large coffee stain, it held a variety of items that I set beside me on the floor. Among them were two silver dollars, a $5 dollar gold piece, a small magnifying glass, some ballpoint pens with gawd-awful smelling ink that dad had ‘borrowed’ from the local bank, a Masonic ring, and a stack of papers and envelopes. In all, the distillation of a man’s lifetime.

For example, there was a faded mimeographed copy of the program for my grade school graduation in December 1952, during which I played a violin solo. I remember that day. I performed the 1st movement of Accolay’s Violin Concerto in A Minor. My violin teacher accompanied me on the piano. To say it was a bit challenging is an understatement, and a slipup on my part caused me to skip a measure. My teacher scurried to catch up. The mistake did not escape dad’s ears. I could sense his disappointment when we met after the graduation ceremony. Not that he said anything, but the way he grabbed my violin case, turned, and walked out of the auditorium ahead of me spoke volumes.

I knew to expect this. When it came to the violin, perfection was everything to him. Which meant even on vacations, he refused to drive the family to the beach in the morning until I had practiced for 30 minutes. It was my cross to bear.

I should have realized it at the time, but what does a kid know? Dad never had music lessons, but by God, his children were going to have them. Not only was I going to play the violin but, in my dad’s mind, I was destined to play professionally.

Which accounts for the ticket stubs I found lying under the graduation program, including two for Jascha Heifetz’s concert in the Milwaukee Auditorium on Monday, November 28, 1949. Sheesh! Row G, Seats 12 and 13! Dad certainly didn’t skimp when it came to these performances. After all, $1.75 per ticket was small fortune but worth it for the privilege of hearing one of the greatest violinists of our time!

I shuffled through the various documents again, and sure enough, there was the program for Heifetz’s concert. I smiled as another memory surfaced. The one thing that stood out in my mind were his legendary arrangements of George Gershwin's Porgy and Bess. My violin teacher came to our seats during intermission. He was delirious. Oh, and yes, I remember the Hora Staccato Heifetz played for an encore. It brought everyone to their feet, cheering, clapping, and whistling. He answered six curtain calls before the house lights were turned up.

Let’s see, I thought, as I came across other ticket stubs. In October 1952, for example, as a birthday present, my father had taken me to Chicago to hear Ruth Tengwall play Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 5 in A Major, K. 219. And in March 1953, we again traveled to Chicago to hear Isaac Stern perform Brahms’s Violin Concerto in D Major, Op. 77. In both cases, I found the programs as well. Dad saved everything from those trips! EVERYTHING!

I continued to work through the contents of the green box. In it, I found a Membership Certificate issued by the Scottish Rite of Freemasonry, asserting dad’s status as a 32nd Degree Mason. More importantly, I found dad’s last will and testament as well as the deed to the house. Sheesh! These should be in a safe deposit box, I thought. But then, the bank would have sealed it upon his death, which only would have made things more difficult for my mother. So, in a way, this was a problem avoided.

Well I’ll be go to Hell! What’s this?! Here’s the program for the performance of the Milwaukee Senior All-City Orchestra from May 1956. I was the co-concertmaster for that performance, which also was held in the Milwaukee Auditorium before an audience of 10,000. In addition to the orchestra’s performing Dvořák's New World Symphony, I remember performing a violin-viola duet—Sinfonia Concertante for Violin and Viola in E flat Major, K.364, by Mozart—with full orchestra accompaniment—during the second half of the concert. The violist was Lissa Wilson, from Rufus King High School.

I still can hear the perfection in our playing—the precise intonation, the absolutely perfect synchronization with the orchestra. The thunderous applause and standing ovation we received was deafening in its intensity! I remember glancing down at my father. Tears were streaming down his face.

Three weeks later I led my high school orchestra in playing Pomp and Circumstance at my graduation. When everyone else was seated, the orchestra members stood, recited the Pledge of Allegiance with the audience, then sat and performed a medley of songs from the musical Carousel.  After that, we stored our instruments backstage and took our places in the audience.

It was the last time I played the violin.

I stopped and thought about graduation night for a few minutes, then turned my attention to the two business-sized envelopes that lay in front of me. Both were addressed to my father, bore the return address of a reputable string instrument shop, and had been opened. The first was postmarked three years earlier. In it was a contract for the consignment of my violin, a Bottali-Roth-Pelitti made in Milan in 1919. Dad had purchased it in 1948 when I started taking lessons at the age of 9. I guess he finally had come to terms with the fact I not only would not become a professional violinist but also, would probably never pick up the instrument again.

The second envelope, upon reflection, was even more trying. Postmarked seven days before his death, the contents included the remittance advice for the payment tendered to my father upon the sale of my violin. It was, I concluded, the end of a story he had woven over the years. It was not what he wanted to achieve for himself as a young man, but instead what he sought to accomplish through me.

For him, it was a dream denied and a vision unfulfilled. For him, it was the final chapter of his life.