A memorial brunch with remembrances for Jerry was held on Sunday, May 12, 2019 at the Michigan League. The video of the full memorial can be viewed in the video section of this site. A playlist of the songs played at the memorial can be heard here.
The family asks that contributions in Jerry’s memory be sent to the following organizations:
- J Street: The political home of pro-Israel, pro-peace Americans. Donate here.
- Jews for Racial & Economic Justice. Donate here.
- University of Michigan Program on Intergroup Relations. Donate here.
Tributes
Leave a tributeZee
I'm having one of those moments when it just hits you hard out of nowhere, and you are just overcome with emotion. I feel Jerry's loss everyday as I move through the various phases of this DEI work, but I now that he would be so proud. I, too, thought a lot about Jerry during the inauguration events. As others have expressed, I'm sad that he did not have a chance to witness with us the many historic firsts, but I'm relieved that he didn't have to endure both the pandemic, as well as what might be characterized as the darkest moments of the Trump presidency. NOBODY could put righteous indignation on display quite like Jerry. Truly one of a kind!
I feel so incredibly blessed to have had Jerry in my life for so long, and at such critical points in my development.
Forever Grateful.....
I'm glad Jerry didn't have to live through this pandemic, but I know his spirit was reflected in the lovely memorial on Tuesday night and those features of Wednesday.
Zee
Thank you Pat and the Gurin family for allowing such a meaningful space for sharing our memories, our love, our tears and our connectedness. Here is a link to a collage of photos so that we may continue to cherish Jerry and what he and Pat have gifted to each of us.
https://drive.google.com/open?id=18O5AJ1XNUwcL6EVBsq_jvaKkTO-uVPpQ
You are loved, in all times of good and sad~
Until we meet again.
Jerry and Pat Gurin were the shoulders we stood on at The U of M in the early to mid 1970s.
A life well lived.
Leave a Tribute
Zee
Phillip Bowman's Reflection on Jerry Gurin
From Jerry's memorial: Remembering my father
On May 12, our family held a memorial for my father at the Michigan League in Ann Arbor. We are tremendously grateful to the more than 200 people who came together to remember him then. Here are my remarks from that day about my father and his deep connections to the people who came and the wonderful family and community they represent.
We’re going to hear from many wonderful speakers today. They’re going to share their memories and perspectives on my father as colleagues, as friends, and as family. Before they begin, I’d like to share some of my own thoughts to help tie those different threads of his life together. And I’d like to share some of my father’s own memories that show how he became the person he was, from conversations I had with him and from some interviews that my son Ben and I did with him about two years ago.
My father did research on group identity in his career, and he was a proud member of many groups himself. He was a Jew, an American, a Democrat, a New Yorker and a Michigander, a University of Michigan social psychology professor, and a beloved, central figure in his family and in his network of colleagues and friends. He identified with all these groups, but not to the exclusion of any other. Jerry was one of the most inclusive people any of us has ever known. He was first and foremost a kind, compassionate human being. And he was, as we would say in Yiddish, a real mensch.
His Jewish identity developed first, growing up in the Bronx with his immigrant parents Morris and Sarah, and his brothers and sisters, Ann, Arnie, and Gloria. My father’s family was not really religious, but they were strongly committed to the Jewish community, Jewish history, and Jewish values. When my father talked about his bar mitzvah more than 80 years later, he still remembered how he felt a deep sense of history participating in a ritual that Jews had followed for thousands of years, even when they had to practice their religion in secret.
He and I both felt that sense of history very personally when we traveled to Israel together a decade ago. We had the overwhelming experience of going to Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center, and using their digital archives to find records about his grandmother and his father’s family.
But we also went to East Jerusalem to try to better understand the lives and the suffering of the Palestinians. Because for my father, being Jewish was about learning from our own history of suffering to be compassionate to others.It was about being committed to making the world better for everyone. He embodied the Jewish concept of tikkun olam – the commitment to heal the world.
My father also identified as an American. He was often frustrated by America: He saw in his life how America could “go crazy” from time to time, as he put it, and he felt we were in one of those crazy periods now. But he believed in what America should be, the America that his parents and other immigrants came here to find – a land of opportunity, as the saying goes, with liberty and justice for all.
Jerry was a child of the FDR era. He remembered being about 10 years old, shortly after FDR was elected, and listening with his family to FDR’s first Fireside Chat.He could still describe vividly how they sat in the living room, tuned in to their old radio, and heard FDR’s voice come through, feeling as if the President was talking directly to them. FDR was President until my father was 22 years old, and those years shaped his world view. He was part of the Greatest Generation and served in Europe during World War II, a critical part of his life that he remembered very clearly as long as he lived. And he became a staunch New Deal Democrat and identified with those values for the rest of his life.
My father was also a real lifelong New Yorker, although he loved Ann Arbor and his life here for more than 70 years. He grew up going into Manhattan with his family to see movies, plays on and off Broadway, and even the Metropolitan Opera, where you could get tickets in the second balcony for 55 cents. He also developed a New Yorker’s passionate interest in politics and world affairs. Even though his father Morris only had a sixth grade education, he read The New York Times every day, and my father became a lifelong Times subscriber too.
Jerry was there at the birth of social psychology as a field: He joined the social psych graduate program at the U of M very early on, and Michigan was one of the very first universities in the country to start such a program. He went there, he said, because he was very interested in “what makes people tick,” as he put it, and what motivates them. And he was also very curious about the social influences on how people develop those motivations. So he joined the “brand new field” of social psychology: “sociology and personality study combined.”
My father loved survey research, he said, because it was “a systematic way of examining an issue [as] a way of studying contemporary history.” He went on to become a founder of the Institute for Social Research and to a very long career at the U of M, working at the university until he was 92 years old. He worked as long as he could because he thrived on the intellectual challenge, the chance to address social issues, and the chance to work with colleagues he cared about.
My father’s work also shaped his personal life profoundly. Through his work he met Pat, his wife for 54 years, with whom he had such a deep, loving, lifelong bond. And through his work, often in collaboration with Pat, he engaged with the issues of race, ethnicity, and diversity that were so important to him. As he became close to many African-American and Latino and Latina colleagues, he told me he appreciated how their experiences resonated with his own experience growing up Jewish. He felt they all shared what it’s like to be both part of America but separate from the dominant American culture, with your own vibrant, connected, and often joyous culture and community. My father relished America’s diversity and he was proud to be part of it.
At the end of the day, what mattered most to my father were his connections to other people – his colleagues, his family, and his friends. And it mattered to him that he mattered to them. He told Ben and me that he largely modeled himself on his own father. The lesson he learned from Morris, he said, was that “the most important thing for a man is to be someone that others could depend on.” My grandfather played that role for his extended family and in the New York Jewish community. And I think my parents, Jerry and Pat, played that kind of role for this wonderful extended family and community that all of us here represent.
I’ve been extremely lucky to be their son, in so many ways. I always hope that I can be as much of a mensch in my life as my father was in his. I loved him deeply and unambivalently, admired him tremendously, and learned so much from him, all my life.
In closing, I want to share a few of my father’s own words. I had many conversations with him during the last year and he often talked about how he felt facing the end of his life. As he said, he was determined that “I will not go kvetching into that good night.” He felt tremendously fortunate that he had lived to the age of 96, that he had no serious illness or pain, and, most of all, that he was able to end his days at home, surrounded by a loving multigenerational family. He was immensely grateful to Pat, who was so much the core of his life and the source of his strength; to Jenny, who helped and supported and cared for him in so many ways; and Brooklyn, you were just a joy to him every single day.
A few years ago, when he was 93, my father talked about facing his mortality in an interview with my cousin Lynn and her daughter Maraya, who are here today. Here’s what he said:
I’m not dwelling on it and I’m not scared of it. It’s simply a reality when you’ve lived 93 years. There is so much that I still want to do, so much life in me, but there is the reality.
I’m handling it better than I thought I would. Better doesn’t mean profound thoughts, or great revelations, or great insights on the subject of death.I mean better in the sense that I’m enjoying things, [and] enjoying life to me means still being connected. I just enjoy days with people.I just treasure them because there’s a realization it’s not going to go on forever.
I have no regrets about the road not taken, no things that I could’ve or should’ve done differently. Equanimity is the word that would describe how I’m dealing with life. Equanimity means acceptance. It is a kind of evenness of things. It’s being at peace, accepting that I’ve done the best I could, and it’s not bad.It’s a positive, even-keeled acceptance.
The important things in life are the relationships you form and the meaning of those relationships to you.That’s what sustains you.That’s the basic thing. And then to find meaning in the work that you do; to be involved in the world; and to find your purpose.
As much as he loved life, I think my father was ready at the end. The one thing that made him sad about dying, he said, was that he wouldn’t get to see how everyone’s “story” played out. He cared about all our stories, from those of us who are now in our seventies and eighties to the great-grandchildren who haven’t yet been born.
I know I will remember my father and his story, and will miss him, with so much love, to the last day of my life. I hope that you will remember him with love and joy too for as long as you can.
I’m very glad to be here to remember my father and celebrate his life with you today. He would be overwhelmed with joy to see all of you here: Your coming here today is the greatest possible tribute that he could have. All of you here really represent his legacy. Thank you so much for being here so we can remember him together.
How my father shaped my life
As I’ve been preparing for Jerry’s memorial next weekend, I’ve been going over many memories and writings from the past. All of us in Jerry’s family contributed to a book of memories in 2017 for his 95th birthday celebration. Here is my letter to him from that book, to share something of what he meant to me in my life.
Dear Dad,
It’s a little overwhelming to know what to say. 95 years – and I’ve been around for 63 of them! I feel incredibly blessed that we’ve had so many decades together, and feel that we’ve gotten closer than ever over the years.
As time has gone by, I’ve realized more and more how much we are cut from the same cloth. People often remark on how much we look alike, except for the facial hair: You only had a beard for a year or two, until you decided it made you “look like Methuselah,” and I grew mine back after taking a hard look in the mirror each time I shaved it off.
But beyond that resemblance, I’ve come to realize how much we share the same interests and passions. Math and science – the love of numbers, fascination with the universe, and respect for data. Great theater and movies, both old (including the really old) and new. Psychology as a context for understanding relationships and the world. And our shared Jewish identity: Our amazing trip to Israel together was one of the best and most meaningful weeks of my life.
While I didn’t inherit your love of football and basketball for some reason, we do share a passionate interest in politics, which may be the ultimate high-stakes sport. And in that arena we always root for the same team. I think your anger at the Tea Party kept you young for many years, and I see that Trump will keep you engaged and energized now – a silver lining for what we’re all enduring in this “interesting” administration.
I’ve tried to emulate your qualities as a person, and hope I’ve managed to pick up some of them. You are a mensch in every sense of the word. You taught me early in life that a mensch has to be able to feel, deeply and authentically, even when feelings are painful. You may be the most genuinely kind person I know. In one recent conversation in Ann Arbor, you said that you simply didn’t understand meanness – you couldn’t imagine taking pleasure in someone else’s humiliation – and I can’t remember ever seeing you do a single mean-spirited thing. But your kindness and empathy are also your strength. You have an inspiring commitment to social justice, and a fury at injustice, that has been a compass for your actions and decisions in life.
I remember many points in my life when you helped me find my path. You fostered my interest in math and science from a very early age, with science kits, trips to the planetarium, and an amazing box of gadgets that introduced me to probability and statistics. I still remember the mechanized coin-tossing machine and a plastic-and-BB’s contraption that demonstrated normal distribution (I’ve learned since then that it’s called a Galton Box). I also remember you gave me a book on probability and gambling as a kid, and we talked about going to a casino together when I turned 21. It took about four more decades before we made it to the craps and blackjack tables at FireKeepers Casino, but I’m glad we finally did!
When I reached my late teens you helped me rediscover those early interests. The summer after my freshman year in college I was planning to major in psychology – my version of going into the family business – when you and Pat gently encouraged me to consider other options. (I think your exact words were, “For God’s sake, please try something else!”) I settled on majoring in biochemistry and found that it fit. Then, as I was pursuing my major, you were the first person to suggest that I might follow Isaac Asimov’s model, combining my interests in English and science to become a science writer. I didn’t quite see it at the time, but soon that path opened up and I was launched on what has been a challenging, rewarding, and multifaceted career.
While you helped me find this particular path, I know you and Pat would have supported any direction I chose to take in work and in life. You both have always been encouraging and positive, have reminded me of my value when I most needed to hear it, and have helped me face the future with energy and optimism. I’m grateful to both of you for that steady and loving support over the years.
I know that the last few years have not been easy for you as age has started to have its inevitable impact. But you swore after you turned 90 that “I will not go kvetching into that good night,” and I believe it. I admire your spirit, your equanimity, and your wonderful engagement with your multi-generational household. I’m still learning from you, as you show us all how to live in the moment, appreciate life with gratitude, and keep trying to practice tikkun olam – healing the world – in whatever ways we can. So let’s say l’chaim – to this day, to your life, and to all our lives together!
Your loving son,
Joel