Steve Fiffer

At age nine in 1959, I sent my hero, the NY Yankees’ Mickey Mantle, a letter inviting him to dinner.  The following year, I sent a letter to another hero-- John F. Kennedy-- wishing him success in his race for president.  Framed and under glass, their personalized, autographed responses still grace my office wall.  But it is another letter—this one unsolicited—that I cherish most.

When I was a sophomore at Yale in the spring of 1970, I joined the vast majority of my fellow students in a strike protesting the arrest of the Black Panther leader Bobby Seale, President Nixon’s bombing of Cambodia, and the university’s treatment of its blue collar workers.  The strike, which preceded May Day protests across the country, received national attention.  And I received a letter from my lawyer-father, a liberal Democrat, with what he termed “Some random thoughts.”

His ten numbered paragraphs were hardly random.  Number One cautioned me not to “confuse the process of feeling about a problem with the process of thinking about a problem.”  In Number Four, he said he found “the idea of striking against a university to whom we pay $3600 for the privilege of attending classes” (yes $3600!) “slightly Orwellian.”  He was no fan of the Panthers, but in Number Six, he said that it was incumbent on society to “correct the injustice (done them).”

There are nuggets of wisdom in all ten paragraphs, but it is the final one that still brings a tear to my eye.  I picture him in his study pecking away on his old Royal typewriter--thoughtfully tempering his own philosophy with the right of his oldest son to grow up and even make mistakes.  It reads:

“I am pleased with your sensitivity to injustice…unhappy that you will miss some excellent classes, envious of the exhilaration of an all-consuming cause (I’ve known it), slightly concerned for your physical well-being, and confident that you will survive your days on the barricade as I survived mine.”

Much love,

Dad