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The Hop Bird


saveliberty

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saveliberty
jonah-goldberg
Jonah Goldberg, National Review:

National Review
Jonah Goldberg
June 17, 2005 7:46 A.M.
The Hop Bird
My Dad, 1931-2005.

AUTHOR’S NOTE: As most readers have probably heard, my dad passed away after a long struggle. The response from the extended NRO family has been more generous than I can convey (and the folks at NR itself have been more supportive than I could ever hope). I haven’t been able to respond to everyone. Rather than try, I am posting the remarks I gave at the memorial service. These are as prepared (which means they were written to be spoken, not read). Thanks again to everyone from the whole Goldberg family and Happy Father’s Day.

As few here would vigorously dispute, my parents are, at first blush, an odd match. Mom, an Episcopalian southern gal essentially ran away from home as a teenager, looking for fun and adventure.


In a sense Dad ran away from home too, but in the way so many nice Jewish boys of his generation did: he graduated from high school when he was 15 and headed off to the University of Michigan looking for books, books, and more books.

As Goldberg family legend has it, my parents were engaged after only a few dates, and mom fell for dad after a daytime date at the Central Park Zoo.

My Dad, already in his late thirties and a respected editor, took Mom on a daytime trip to the zoo. Now, for a gal like Mom, this wasn’t exactly her idea of an exciting date. But she was intrigued. He brought her straight away to the old birdhouse, which hasn’t been there for decades. At the main birdcage he told her to look off to one side where an un-presupposing small bird was standing alone. It took my Mom a few moments to find it. Keep your eye on that one, Dad told her, as she was still wondering what this was all about. And she waited. And waited. What was the deal?

[H/T Jonah Goldberg ]
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