Eulogy for Leo Askinazy

By Steve (Shlomo) Askinazy, his son. 12/19/004

This week, in shul, we begin reading the section of the Torah called VAYACHI. The last chapter of Genesis, telling us of the deaths of Jacob and Joseph, the last of the patriarchs. How appropriate the timing seems to me as I say Goodbye to my father. The Torah also describes the blessings that Jacob bestows on all of his offspring.

My father, too, bestowed many blessings on his children, as well as on everyone who knew him.

When I was growing up, my father was my hero. I was convinced that there was nothing he could not do. He told me so himself. But he also proved it to me, time and time again. I never had to brag to my friends about my father. All of my friends were already jealous and wished that he was their dad. Was it because he was so handsome, or so fun loving? Which he truly was. Or because he was so strong that he could pick us up and throw us into the air, long after we were way too old for that? Maybe they were jealous of his fabulous factory, the shop where our scout troop got to use real machinery to turn out their projects? ( Some of those scouts are here today, proving that one of the lessons my brothers and I learned from our father is that once you were a friend, you were a friend for life. ) I think mostly they were jealous of the toys and gadgets with which my dad filled our house. That was why OUR house was always the main hang out for all of the friends my brothers and I had when we were growing up. Our house was the place that everybody wanted to play.

And what toys my father provided for us. When we were small our Yard was filled with playground quality Swings and Slides and SeeSaws . Later on our finished basement included: a Bowling Alley with automated scorekeeper and ball return, an Arcade quality Pinball Machine and a real Las Vegas Slot machine. And later on in Mill Basin there was the professional bar with the real soda gun, squirting out 5 flavors. And the 5 gallon Orange Drink machine always humming, with its arms twirling and spraying cold orange drink around the sides of it's big glass dome. And of course there were always the boats, the plane and eventually the waterfront right in our back yard.

Most people would describe my father as a Macho man. And he was, but Not in a stereotypical way.

He Didn't follow baseball or football. He had No interest in watching other people playing games. He needed to be doing things himself. And he preferred doing real things, not playing games.

Fun for him was fishing, boating, hunting, and of course flying

I remember when my father started flying. I was 10 years old. Back then we always spent Sundays together as a family and frequently my Father and Mother would take my brothers and me out for exciting family outings. Once, my father had heard that there was a seaplane base in Mill Basin that offered sightseeing tours. And so we went, And he was hooked. He was determined to learn to fly on his own. And so he did . Even though it meant not only the physical mastery of the plane, which I'm sure came easily to him, but a lot of mapping and navigational technology as well. It was the first time I ever saw my father studying.

My father was not a book smart person. After all, He left high school before graduation to join the Navy during World War 2. Most of what my father knew, he had to teach himself. Maybe that's why he had such a unique ability to think outside the box. And to find creative solutions to problems. In my early teens when I began working at my father's shop on weekends and summer vacations, I was amazed to discover that even though he was just a tool and die maker and not a trained engineer. His genius for problem solving was well known in his field, and highly trained and successful engineers would frequently come by to ask his advice when they had a problem. Even until only 6 weeks ago, a fellow inventor was consulting my Dad in the nursing home for help resolving a mechanical detail in manufacturing a new item.

My brothers and I have often wondered what my father might have accomplished if he had had a real education. But instead, he had to fend for himself from an early age. In many ways, his was a true American success story. As one of 13 children, growing up poor, during the depression. He didn't get a lot of help. He often told me that at dinnertime, when he was a child, if you weren't quick, you didn't get enough to eat. So he became very independent. And he staid that way for the rest of his life.

Even as a young child he had to get a job to earn his own spending money. One of his most toughest lessons, came when he saved up enough money to buy himself a bicycle, only to have it stolen from him within a few days. He never got over that hurt. When he spoke about it, you could tell that he still felt the injustice of it. But he learned that life didn't owe him anything. He would have to take care of himself.

 

Maybe that explains why my father was too independent and restless to go on working for his father. So, He became the only one of his brothers to leave the family business, and start his own. In fact he started several. My father loved working and he loved business. He never did retire. Even until last year, at 79 years of age, hooked up to his oxygen tank, he was excited about driving himself to the office everyday.

Working was never about the money, for my father. By all rights, he should have ended up a much wealthier man. But my Father was always more interested in the challenges than in the follow-through. As a problem solver my father was always inventing new things. When I was still a baby, and turned out to be a perpetual cryer, my father invented a mechanical rocker, that hooked up to the crib or carriage. Years later, when he allowed that patent to lapse, someone else made the money from that invention. Mostly my father invented things that he needed. Some he never patented at all. A few of his industrial patents had some limited use within the manufacturing industry and he did manage to market them. Others became his version of share ware, which everyone else copied. When we moved to a waterfront house in Mill Basin, my father was determined to find a way to park his plane right in our backyard and fly it right out of there. Until then Seaplane bases depended on long rampways and lots of manpower to haul planes into and out of the water. But Thinking outside the box, was my father's specialty, so he created a hydrolically submergible floating platform. I don't know if he has ever been duly credited for this invention, but I do know that it has become the standard not only for seaplanes but in many boatyards as well.

And of course there is BreathewithEeze. When Doctors could not help my father with his emphysema, he invented the Breathewith Eeze spring, which could. And which became his main business, after he sold off his others. Now Doctors and hospitals around the world continue to buy and recommend his invention. And as Frank and Nancy can attest, Testimonials come in almost everyday from customers who want to thank my father for saving their lives.

There was one invention, however that my father never succeeded in creating. He was always convinced that he could discover a system to beat the odds at Black Jack. I don't think he ever considered gambling a game. He never accepted that anything could be random. He had worked too hard to be in control in his life and so he was sure that there must be a way to control that, too. My father did not have a gambling problem. He rarely bet on anything. But he did come to love the lifestyle of the highrolling Casino gambler. And every now and then he would be convinced that he had broken the code. And so off we would go as a family for a trip to Las Vegas where he would try out his new system. He was never reckless. He never spent more on it then he would on any hobby. And my brothers and I and my mother would get to enjoy all the fringe benefits of a lavish vacation.

Even though my father's parents were very poor, when he was growing up, He grew up in a very loving home. Though too poor to even have his own bed (he slept in a chair), and too poor to have a winter coat, (he froze on his way to school in the winter), my Father's recollections of his childhood were only happy ones. As an old song from that time goes. "I can't give you anything but love" And there was a lot of love in my grandparent's home. The old-fashioned, exuberant, not-ashamed-to-show-it kind of love. They spoke Russian at home when my father was growing up. And my father was proud of his fluent Russian. He continued to speak Russian to his own father, until the day my grandfather died.

My father also used to kiss his father. Both hello and goodbye, A loving kiss on the lips. I used to think it weird and very "Old World" when I was a kid. But after my grandfather died, my father introduced a new custom into our little family. From that time, up until a few days ago. My father always kissed me on the lips. A kiss hello and a kiss goodbye. Family was very important to my grandparents, and they past that value on to my father. And so my father was a very loving parent, never afraid to say it or show it. There was never a time when I was growing up that I ever had to question my father's unconditional love. He was proud of all three of his boys. And did everything he could to make us a happy family. Like the one he knew growing up.

And later on, in the life he shared with Gloria, he loved her kids as well. And He earned their love in return.

Richie and Laurie and their kids Richie and Lee, and Robbie and Janet. Have all come to know how much love my father had to give.

When my grandparents were still alive, their home was a perpetual family reunion center. It was always filled with visiting relatives. Anytime you paid a visit to my grandparents, you got to spend time with loads of aunts and uncles and cousins as well.

But after my grandparents were gone, it was my father who took on that role. He wanted to be the cement that would keep the family together. And by then we had the house to do it in. That was really the point of all of the toys and gadgets, and gimmicks with which my father filled our house. It was never about Showing Off. It was always about Sharing. The fact that our home on Whitman Drive became the place that our whole big extended family wanted to come to was my father's greatest joy. And for several years in my teens and early twenties that was the case. Sunday mornings in those days were always spent getting ready for company. Filling the soda machine and the Orange Drink machine, starting the BBQ, cleaning the boat. The funny thing is, though, that we never actually invited anyone. We just knew that they would come. They would come to see us, they would come to see each other, and they would come for a ride on the boat.

 

Yes my father was very proud of his boat. He was very proud of all that he had accomplished. And he had a right to be proud. He worked hard for them. Ever since I can remember, there was always a boat. He Built his first boat, from plain lumber. Then over the years the boats got bigger and bigger. And Believe it or not, he built his first plane, too, from scrap parts. My father was the original Do-it-yourself-er. But it Had nothing to do with being cheap. It wasn't even because he thought he could do it better than anyone else. Although he did think that and he was usually right, Mostly he just loved the process of building and creating. And that's why he was always available to help everyone else with their projects as well. That was what he called being a mensch.

I remember when we moved from Ralph Ave to the big house in Mill Basin. Building the Deck in the back yard became a big project, a huge project. My brothers and I were enlisted into service. But afterwards my father seemed very sad. He told me how disappointed he was that neighbors came to watch our progress, but no one in our new affluent neighborhood offered to help. He just couldn't understand that. It was unthinkable to him.

There's another side to my father that most people did not know about. Most know him as a Fun Loving Guy. But he also enjoyed helping others. For more than 20 years he Served on the Assoc Bd of Dir.s of Brookdale Hospital. He rarely spoke about it, but he Loved going to meetings and planning events and fund raisers. It Gave him a sense of purpose, different and greater than any of his other pursuits. I like to think it imbued in me a sense of community spiritedness, too. I remember an important incident that happened when I was very young. Too young even to be a cub scout yet. My brother Mickey was the cub scout. I was there with my family at the annual Cub Scout event. They were announcing the winner of the raffle. The prize was a brand new bicycle. We didn't win. I was devastated, but before I could start to cry , My father said "Isn't that wonderful" And he said it like he meant it. And he went on to explain that the boy who did win, was probably the only boy in our troup whose parents could not afford to buy him a bike on their own. That was a seminal event for me. My father taught me that it was possible to enjoy other people's good fortune. And my father could.

Perhaps that's why he always had so many friends. He really did. His shop friends and his fishing friends and his flying friends and his hospital friends. People loved my father and everybody wanted to be his friend.

Even toward the end. In the nursing homes and the hospitals. I was always amazed at how well liked my father was by the staff. The nurses and therapists always had such good things to say about him and came around as often as possible, and went way beyond the call of duty to be helpful to him. I have to admit, I was surprised. I always thought my father would be a terrible patient. He was always such an active person. As his world shrunk to just his room and then just his bed. And as his body failed him, one organ at a time. As he became more and more helpless. I thought he would become depressed, and angry. But instead he stayed hopeful and unrealistically optimistic. Always talking about getting better, going back to work, driving his car. In trying to understand this My brothers and I thought this was an indication of his Fear of Dying. But in the last few days. Watching him as it became increasingly difficult to even shake his head yes or no. I realized that it wasn't his fear of dying, It was his love of living. My Father loved living and enjoyed every bit of it to the very last drop.

During the last several days as my father got weaker and weaker, it was sometimes hard to tell if he knew we were there and understood what we were saying, but with patience and effort, He let us know that he was still there. A faint shake of his head "Yes or No" or a squeeze of his hand. When I was leaving him on Friday, I blew him a kiss goodbye. It had become an air kiss recently because he was in isolation due to fear of infection. He didn't respond. I said. What's the matter you don't want to kiss me anymore. I saw the smile appear on his face and in his eyes. It took most of his strength, but he puckered up and blew a kiss before sinking back into the pillow.

Years ago, when I was up in the plane with my father, He tried to tell me why he loved flying. He told me how looking down from up there, seeing how tiny everything on the ground was, put everything in perspective. It made all of his problems seem small.

I know he is flying now. I know he is looking down at all of us, laughing at how small our problems seem from up there, and most of all, I know that he is enjoying himself.

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