Howard V. Epstein, Ph.D.

My father, my abba, Howard Epstein, was deeply identified with his Judaism and the Jewish community. But I’m not sure he had a faith upon which to lean as he traversed life’s difficulties. Peoplehood and especially Jewish peoplehood was his faith. 

So the best way I know to honor my father in this project is to speak of what mattered most to him: his family members who were lost to the Holocaust; his Jewish identity; locating family members all over the world; gerontology; earning a doctorate degree; and, music—especially opera.   

Some of my father’s family in Europe were left behind and lost in the Holocaust. He especially wanted to honor the memory of his four young female cousins who died in the forest in Lithuania. He went to visit Latvia and Lithuania twice—once with emah and once with me. One of his most prized possessions was a rubbing he’d done of the gravestone of his grandmother, his bubbe in Dankere, Latvia. No one had seen it in decades until we discovered it two miles outside of town.

As for his Jewish identity, my abba came from a very small town—Logan, Ohio—and he was devoted to the Jewish community. He saw that my sisters Abby and Julie and I got a Jewish education even when it was hard to afford. Judaism gave my father’s life meaning and he saw it as a connection to past generations.

During his retirement, my abba was very interested in finding family members around the world. He found relatives in Stockholm, Singapore, Israel, and California. People embraced his sincerity and raw desire to connect and to keep alive the memory of ancestors.

My father’s career was in gerontology—working with the elderly. I marvel that he chose that career in the 1950s. He helped prepare many social workers to work in the field.

 A mid-life career change led my father to academia. He earned his doctorate at the age of 50. He loved his colleagues Barbara Brooks and Katy Thompson at University of Georgia. He was grateful to become chairman of the department of Social Work at Georgia State. His final achievement there was the creation and accreditation of that university’s Masters of Social Work program, the first in the city of Atlanta.

My father grew up listening to opera. My sisters and I grew up with him listening to it. If you were inside our house on a Saturday afternoon, then you were listening to opera! I think opera transported my father to another place where he could displace any feelings of difficulty and bask in the beauty of the music and the voices. I was blessed to travel with him over a six-year period when we visited Verona and St. Petersburg as well as made annual trips to New York City’s Metropolitan Opera. On those trips, I got to see the playful and grateful parts of my father. For that I am eternally grateful. 

When I think about my father’s life and passions, he taught many values that shaped me and my sisters for life: 

• • Compassion for others, especially those unable to care for themselves

• • Scholarship and research, and with it, the respect for those who are our teachers

• • Writing and the ability to convey deeply felt meaning into words

• • Family and connection, the reaching out to be a part of a bigger historical whole

• • Music and its ability to transport us to a grateful space

Thank you, God, for the blessing of our abba, Howard Epstein. I know he learned many lessons in this lifetime. He is now at peace, and I remember him with love.