In Honor of Leonard Schiff
March 1, 2006

I’m going to say a few words about my father, Leonard Schiff. There are some other people here who also knew him, and after I’m done, I hope you’ll share whatever thoughts and feelings you would like to. Before I start I want to acknowledge my mother, sister, brother and some other family members who were not able to join us today.

My Dad was born in Poland, in 1918. He was a member of that “great generation,” men and women who survived through the horror a economic collapse and world war. When he was 2 years old his father, my grandfather, came to America along with so many other Eastern European Jews. My Dad stayed behind with his mother and his younger sister, trying to be the little “man of the house.” He nearly didn’t make it to America with the rest of the family. When it was time for them to rejoin my grandfather, there wasn’t enough money for three tickets. But some neighbors took up a collection, and through the generosity of the community, a ticket was purchased for him. So, when he was 10 they all rejoined my grandfather in Miami, Florida.

My Dad had a very strong Jewish identity. When he was young, he adored his grandfather. Many times my Dad told me about his grandfather, a pious Jew. My Dad was fond of describing how his grandfather was respected by Gentiles as well as Jews. As a child, he wore a kippah all the time and grew payes. All he wanted to do was to be a “good Jew.”

When he came to America he couldn’t speak any English. He remembered being put into kindergarten at the age of 10, and the American kids making fun of him. He was proud of graduating second in his high school class.

When he was a boy he was exposed to the horrors of the depression. His parents ran a grocery store. My Dad remembered people coming in and begging to eat the crumbs out of the large bread display box that was in the window of the store, even though the crumbs were mixed in with dead flies.

Miami was a Southern redneck town back then. My father was exposed to the ugly racism that dominated the South. He got to know some black people and was indignant about how they were treated.

These experiences-watching people starve to the point of desperation, witnessing people being oppressed and abused because of their skin color-- seared his consciousness, and sent him on a lifetime journey of commitment to social justice.

The intense Jewish piety of his childhood dissipated when he came to America.

When he was in high school, he heard a man speaking in a park, about the injustices of the capitalist system. My father discovered communism, and this became his religion. He studied Marx and Lenin and Engels. Eventually he became a full-time employee of the U.S. Communist party. He worked in black neighborhoods called color-towns, trying to radicalize workers and organize labor unions. He would work at nights so as not to be caught by the local sheriffs. They might have killed him. During the day he hid and slept under houses.

In the years preceding World War II he desperately wanted to fight fascism. He tried to enlist in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade to preserve the democratic government of Spain from the fascist Franco, an ally of Hitler and Mussolini, but he was rejected because he was too young.

In 1940 my mom and dad were married and began a family. He took the responsibilities of family life seriously, as he took all responsibilities seriously. He began doing carpentry work, working himself up to be a foreman, and eventually starting his own construction company. Radical activism was more of a sideline now. He focused on being a father, husband and provider.

After Pearl Harbor and America’s entry into the War, he wanted to enlist in the military. But he was working in a war-related industry and was told it was more important for him to continue doing that. One of my cherished memories is the time we went together to see “Saving Private Ryan.” We both wept through the opening sequence. My father was one of the people who designed and built the landing craft that went up on the beaches during D-Day. He, along with many others, helped save our civilization.

He was always steady. He was always there. Our family went through some terrible crises, some awful encounters with catastrophic illness. My father was the rock through all this. I have no idea where he found the strength to do what he did. He was just a young man.

He worked hard all his life but he never complained. I remember when I was a teenager, living in a suburban town on Long Island, that he commuted 2 hours each way to a job in New Jersey, because that was the best job he could get at the time. It wasn’t about status or high living for him. He did things like that because he was a good provider, a good father and husband in the old-fashioned way.

My father played a noble role at an important moment in American history. In 1954, when we were still living in Florida, there was a local offshoot of McCarthyism. A red-baiting Grand Jury was formed. Witnesses were called and intimidated into naming names, identifying people as former Communists. People lost their jobs and their families. It was a witch hunt.

Someone named my father’s name. He was called to testify, but to his everlasting honor, he refused to name names, even though it had been many years since he was active in the Communist Party. He would not be intimidated. A long time later he explained to me that he understood that this public grand jury process was an attempt to punish people for being communists and to frighten people into being silent. He felt that the people he had known were sincere patriots who had done nothing wrong. He refused to name names and he was declared in contempt of court and sent to jail for an open-ended period of time. He was joined by several other people. Their case got national attention and was eventually reversed on appeal. But he stayed in jail for a month, never knowing how long he would be there.

He didn’t talk about any of these things when I was growing up. I found out about them after I left home, years later, from my mother. It wasn’t that he was ashamed of anything. He was just a modest man who did what he thought was right. When he described his experience in jail, he was most proud that he and his friends gave a good scrubbing to their cell, astonishing the guards.

My father was an authentic American hero. A small hero, to be sure. But a hero nonetheless. He stood up against fascism at home and fascism abroad. He was courageous and stubborn and principled. He was a hero.

I will always be proud to be his son.

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