ForeverMissed
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Still missed

April 4, 2023
I miss my dad every day. He was a gem and touched so many who he met. Always in my heart, sweet daddy. Feel so lucky to have had you in my life.
April 4, 2023
Still working, although less. Quick story. David asked me to babysit the 8 year old son of Elizabeth Kubler Ross. David invited her to speak but wasn't sure what she was going to do with her son. I recall being thrilled to help out.  Words can't express what David means to me. 

Photo booth frolic

April 9, 2018

I look at this photo and it makes me smile every time..

Drop a line when you can;).  

Te extrañamos mucho...❤️

As I spoke it - at the funeral.

April 10, 2014

My father, David Rigler, was an extraordinary man.

 

Together with my brother and sister, we started to write an obituary – a short story of his life. The idea is to express some essence of this extraordinary man’s life in something that is – what – fits in one short column?  Maybe at most a few type written pages?

 

If you are here, it is because you knew him.  And if you knew him, you knew that he was a unique, wise, warm, and – that word again – extraordinarily - thoughtful man.  He was at once both a natural engineer and technologist – and a deeply caring humanist who volunteered his time and thought to help and be engaged with people.

 

My father part of that ‘greatest generation’ in America, born in New York City, in 1921, son of Romanian Jewish immigrants. He mother, Sophie, was a well-educated, strong-willed, classically trained violinist, who boasted of fluency in 9 languages, including Esperanto.   His father, Bernard, was a self-educated, gentle man, much admired and liked by my father.  Bernard immigrated as a teen, and twice built up a business, only to lose it each time  – once when he was drafted into the army for the War to End All Wars (WWI), and a second time when overcome by the economics of the Great Depression.

 

Coming of age during the Great Depression must have been both difficult and exciting.  Perhaps that helps explain some of who he was - observing and experiencing loss.  

 

He had a lifelong curiosity and thirst for information and knowledge.  As a boy, my father would disassemble  every piece of technology he could put his hands on – and occasionally reassemble them. In the process he taught himself about electricity and electronics.  For the rest of his life, he remembered and used his high school French, and German, his algebra, trig, and calculus.    He excelled at classes he liked, and failed – without caring – classes in which he had no interest.  He was a chemistry ‘hacker’ in high school, nearly blowing up the lab more than once, and might have become a chemist if his mother hadn’t been dead set against it.

 

He loved the energy of New York of the 1920s and 30s.   He independently traveled the subways by the age of 5, and told us that, when older, he frequently cut school to explore.  By the time he was in high school he would slip out to listen to music and jazz.  (Last year, we were at Ray Brown’s Cabrillo College ‘big band’ concert where they played a Benny Goodman composition. My dad said – “oh, yeah, I know that song, I heard Benny Goodman play that.”

 

In 1939, both my father, and his father, Bernard, worked at the New York Worlds Fair, including at  Nathan’s Hot Dog stand for a time.   My dad worked also worked as a barker announcing the ‘girlie’ show.  70 years later he could still call out the spiel to the show, word for word with the same ‘carny’ rhythm.

 

Out of high school, my dad followed his pattern of doing well if he liked the subject and ignoring the rest and quickly failed out of New York City College.   Shortly before WWII, however, he got a civilian job working for the war department – working on top secret technology – ‘radar’.

 

He was sent to the Panama Canal Zone to install and maintain radar units.  He recalled flying to Panama, in multiple hops and while feeling airsick – he was overwhelmed with the ‘greenness’ of Panama as he descended.   While there,  he adventured out of the Canal Zone and took an interest in the locals and local culture. 

 

When the war ended, my grandmother, Sophie travelled, on her own to Panama  to get her boy back.  He reluctantly returned.

 

Back in the states,  David switched life course, and on the GI bill, went back to school.  He graduated Phi Beta Kappa at Ohio University, and continued onto University of Michigan where he got his PhD/Diplomate in Psychology. 

 

While at Ohio he met Marilyn Press.  Marilyn explained to him that, in Ohio, if a couple dated more than 2 times, they were considered serious.  Of course she told him that on their 3rd date. Marilyn became the love of his life.  My mother and father were married in 1948 and their deep love was evident to anyone who met them.  This coming August would have been their 65th Anniversary.  We – his children - were born in the 50s – they had at least some time before we came along.

 

 

My father had an honored and respected career as a child psychologist. He worked on the long term life studies in Denver,  Colorado.  He was a grant evaluator at the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), and he was the chief psychologist and full professor of psychology at the University of Southern California.

 

When I first learned about the contradicting schools of thought in therapy, I asked him which one of the many “ism’s” he used.  The answer was ‘None of those.  I listen and I talk with my patients”.

 

We were lucky children.  My parents made life decisions and career choices to create more family time – choosing that over career advancement. I know my dad  liked NIMH grant evaluator work.   Nonetheless, he made a decision to find another position in which he could be at home more and travel less – which is how we all ended up in California.

 

David Rigler was also more than a techno-nerd and psychologist.  In many ways he was one of the original DIY’er,  remodeling the houses we lived in, building and keeping ‘workshop’ from which he could fix nearly anything.  Every tool was carefully kept and at 92, he could still tell us – without looking – where to find a particular tool from his shop, when we needed it.

 

My father retired in 1983, and my parents moved here to Santa Cruz.  They claimed it was just a good place to be – the fact that Mark and I lived here was just happenstance.  (Sara moved here soon after.)  A year after moving here, my father designed and built much of their own house on Western Drive. 

 

Together with my mom, he became so involved in the community that I couldn’t go anywhere with them without running into someone who was connected to them on some board or committee. That means, likely, many of you.  They involved themselves with Temple Beth El, where they revived and rebuilt the Jewish Film Festival. They were on the board for Hillel.  They became interviewers for US Servas Travelers organization and together my father and I created their first website. (Not incidentally, they hosted Servas travelers and travelled that way themselves.)  They volunteered and published the newsletter for Woman’s International for Peace and Freedom. When my mom had a weekly KUSP radio talk show, my dad was the engineer for that show and also on the KUSP board.

 

When Cabrillo College foolishly turned down my father’s offer to teach Psychology classes, telling him he needed a ‘teaching degree’, he instead volunteered his time at the Santa Cruz Adult Schools and later help create SeniorNet, teaching computer literacy.  (I haven’t ever seen his psychology graduate or undergraduate diplomas – but his office wall displays a ‘Certificate of Appreciation’ from City of Santa Cruz ‘Senior Computer Center’ and another certificate proclaiming him a member of the MacCruzer’s “MacNerd Society.)

 

A few years ago, when talking with someone who served with my dad on the City of Santa Cruz Parks and Rec committee, he said “the members would talk on and on about some topic or critical decision we needed to make and everyone would talk except your dad. Finally we’d all wind down – and then turn to your father – who in a few sentences – would quietly synthesize all that we said and make a ‘suggestion’.  Most of the time we followed exactly his ‘suggestion’.”

 

All his life my father was an avid photographer.  He started with a Kodak Brownie and doing his own developing and graduated to better cameras as soon as he could afford them.  For his entire life, I never saw him without a camera nearby. We have literally thousands of slides and photos that he left us – that are records of his time in Panama and New York, and all family vacations and occasions.  The Panama photos are among my favorites showing a time and place and people and especially children that  are long since gone.

 

There is so much more to say.  By talking or writing and telling you all these little stories, it feels like I can hold onto an essence of him.  There is a lifetime to describe and I know so little really that I want to ask him for more. I want to ask him for help in describing him, and I can’t anymore. 

 

All I can really say is that I loved him and I’m going to miss him terribly.

 

 

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