Do you know in American history, or world history for that matter, anyone who has gone from dying in a hospice to living another year with renewed fame, international acknowledgment, plaudits and gifts from world celebrities?
During his last year — half of it spent in the hospice, a quarter in Martha’s Vineyard and the final months at his son’s home in Washington, D.C. — one man wrote a dozen newspaper columns to add to the 8,000 he already had written, added a book to the 30 he already had published, and then slipped off Wednesday, Jan. 17 to eternal rest, or wherever this famous and beloved character has gone.
The man is Art Buchwald — a Jew, a writer, a celebrity and a mensch.
Here’s the story of Art Buchwald’s last year. Suffering from kidney disease, he entered a Washington hospice Feb. 7 after deciding that he didn’t want to prolong his life by having dialysis five hours a day, three days a week.
One leg already had been amputated for other reasons, and Buchwald figured, “I had two decisions. Continue dialysis, and that’s boring to do three times a week, and I don’t know where that’s going, or I can just enjoy life and see where it takes me.”
From February until July, Buchwald entertained family and friends, political and artistic glitterati at the hospice. When his kidneys seemed to be functioning again, he returned to summer at Martha’s Vineyard and continue his tradition of working the annual auction to raise funds for local social service agencies.
Born in New York in 1925, Buchwald’s mother was institutionalized for acute depression when he was 3, and he never saw her again. His father, unable to care for Buchwald and three older sisters, placed them in a Seventh-Day Adventist home in Flushing, N.Y. Two years later they were transferred to the Hebrew Orphan Asylum in Manhattan.
Buchwald ran away at age 17 to join the Marines. He said he hired a guy from Skid Row to act as his father because kids under 18 needed parental approval to enlist.
Buchwald served more than three years in the Pacific and, while never a great supporter of war, he always cherished and helped the Marine Corps.
After the war, Buchwald attended the University of Southern California and edited the campus magazine — but he never graduated because he didn’t have a high school diploma.
So Buchwald went to Paris, where a small job at the International Herald Tribune morphed into several humor/gossip/satire columns that were very well-received by expatriates, tourists and soldiers.
In 1962 Buchwald went to Washington, churning out three columns a week that were syndicated in 700 newspapers.
In 1985, the Washingtonian wrote that Buchwald was “the bad boy tweaking the nose of the establishment [with] the countenance of a Jewish leprechaun.”
Buchwald’s take on his impending death was part humor columnist, part rabbi.
“I have no idea where I’m going, but here’s the real question: What am I doing here in the first place?” he said. “It’s what you do on Earth and the good deeds you do on Earth that are important.”
Lehitraot, Art. From all of us.
Dov Burt Levy is a columnist for the Jewish Journal – Boston North.