Many of you know the story of my mother escaping Germany at the age of 17 with her then 10 year old brother Nathan, never to see their parents again. For the first six years of my life I was blessed to have my uncle Nat living with us in our railroad apartment in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. He was like an older brother to me especially since he was 14 years younger than my father.  He took me for rides through Prospect Park in his pacific blue Studebaker.  I was the page boy at his wedding to my Aunt Sondra in 1952, but I cried as he moved out of our apartment for good.  Years later he introduced me to horse back riding and tennis.  He literally taught me how to have fun.

More importantly he always treated me with great respect and as his equal.  I started working Saturdays and summers at the fur shop owned by my father and uncle when I was still a pre-teen.  He gave me as much responsibility in the business as I was capable of handling.  By the age of 14 I was literally the full charge bookkeeper for Miller (Milich) & Berkowitz.  I also worked in the factory, where my uncle taught me the skills of nailing and squaring.  I always wanted to come into the business but he and my father always encouraged me to continue my education.  Finally, in 1971, during my last year of NYU Law School, they asked me to come into the business which was then thriving. However, by that time I was committed to my new career as an attorney.  While most of my classmates were starting out in their new legal careers, I felt I was retiring from my first career of about 15 years.

Even though we were no longer working together we remained close for the rest of his life.  I tried to repay him for his years of kindness and love by providing pro bono legal services to the business and to him personally.  When his kidneys began to fail I was proud to come in from Dix Hills to Howard Beach to take him into Manhattan for dialysis treatments.  After fighting valiantly he succumbed to kidney failure in 2006 at the age of 86.  My mother passed almost exactly one year later at the age of 94.  My father passed the day after Yom Kippur in 2009 also at the age of 94.  I miss them all dearly.