Laurie Levy

Now that I’m old (88) and wise, I’ve decided my dad was the best man I’ve ever known.

He labored to send two younger brothers to college, when he was smarter and should have gone himself. He set up a men’s clothing store in Omaha during The Depression, destroyed when the paint store next door exploded; no insurance.  

Dad borrowed a car, driving to Minneapolis through Iowa, and when he saw a For Rent sign in Mason City, he took a chance.  When the boys in the store (remaining “the boys” into their 50’s) heard a clamor on opening day, they assumed the town was celebrating the opening, but it turned out Dillinger had just robbed the bank across the street. Dad calmed everyone, they said.

He brought two refugee families to town in WWII. He regularly outfitted impoverished young men who’d received college scholarships. Though not religious, he found some Iowa Jews and led them into building a little brick synagogue, then coaxed a rabbi down from Minneapolis every High Holiday. After college I left for New York, subsidized by Dad ‘til I found a job; he wrote weekly, slipping a $20 bill into each envelope for the rest of his life.

He died in 1973 at 74.  Townspeople flocked to the funeral. Afterward, I gave his watch to my son, and from Dad’s medicine cabinet, I took his small canister of Yardley Talc. He always smelled so good.

I store it untouched in my own bathroom cabinet.