Eulogy for Robert and Charlotte Edelberg

Walter Edelberg

I write first about Mom. Mom’s dependence on Dad and others in her last years cannot make us forget the extent to which she was her own person. Throughout most of her life she was fiercely independent. She thought for herself and often saw things differently from those around her. The fact is, Mom was contrary by nature. Even in her final years, when her ability and inclination to argue had largely evaporated, a hint of that contrariness remained: “Bullshit” was still a favored reply.

A core value for Mom was the importance of standing up for oneself and for others. It is a form of bravery. Out for a walk in her early twenties, she saw a man angrily and repeatedly striking his teenage daughter. Mom walked up to him, stood very close, glared angrily at him, and shook her fist a few inches from in his face. In her forties, in a convenience store in rural Oklahoma, she saw a small child stealing from a convenience store. The boy’s Native American family was crammed into a dilapidated car parked outside. The clerk said, “I caught you, you little bastard,” but Mom interrupted him. “Oh no. You are quite mistaken. I told him that he could have anything in the store and I’d pay for it.” In her eighties, in a grocery store parking lot, she confronted a man who had verbally mistreated his wife. Mom stood up for herself, too, and that is one reason she and Dad had such a successful marriage. A year after we moved to New Jersey, she gave Dad the silent treatment for two or three days until he finally surrendered. Whatever it was, they talked it through in a long discussion, interrupted by laughter, on the white wooden bench swing in the back yard.

Mom had a sharp tongue and was quick with the perfect comeback, something I always admired even when I was the target. Mom used to tell us that when someone insults or mistreats you, you have to deal with it then and there. “It doesn’t matter if it’s at a formal party and everyone’s dressed up,” she said. “You have to do it right then.” In the eighth grade I was afraid to stand up to a schoolmate who kept picking on me. After this went on for much too long, Mom at long last threw me out of the house and told me not to come back until I had beaten that kid up. (I did what I had to do.)

This was all the more combative side of Mom, best exercised in the name of justice. But she also was an incredibly warm, loving, nurturing, generous person. She sowed seeds that in time came to blossom. In Houston she took my brothers and me every other week to the public library—“You pick one book, and I’ll pick one for you; that’s the rule,” and for me this led to a lifelong love of fiction. If you were interested in cooking, she encouraged it. Music, astronomy, airplanes, whatever it was. When I was still in high school, she put me on to a book on social philosophy, and we know how that ended. Dad was as happy as he was, and able to accomplish all that he did, because Mom was completely there for him. She was deeply involved with her children, but it is hard to describe this in a way that does it justice. Mostly it was the way she talked at such length with us about our lives, and hers; about other people; about everyday events and situations; about the high points and low. There was a mutual interest here, a connection. Each of Mom’s children felt loved, and we loved our Mom.

Now, about Dad. Dad had an amazing zest for life. He had an almost insatiable curiosity about everything, and you could talk with him about anything—from the arts to history to mathematics to politics to religion. He pursued oil- and watercolor-painting, bread-making, and French language lessons. His greatest interests, however, were in the natural sciences. In his youth he read Paul DeKruif’s classic book, Microbe Hunters, and he was hooked. That fascination with microbiology persisted throughout his life. At the University of Pennsylvania, he wrote his doctoral dissertation on the biophysics and physiology of the membrane of the red blood cell. At the age of eighty-four, he wrote to his family about how thrilled he was to have his new microscope. “It all makes me very happy since I have been wanting this for so many years,” he wrote. Yet he became a career scientist in psychophysiology, which concerns the relation between the central nervous system and the rest of the body. Much of his research concerned the galvanic (also called electrodermal) skin response or GSR. This is the biophysical response that lie-detectors measure. His research developed better means to measure it, but focused especially on developing a robust theory that fully explained how and why it occurs.

Among psychophysiologists Dad’s scientific research was world-renowned. He authored or co-authored more than seventy published research papers. In the mid-1960’s, the Society for Psychophysiological Research, the leading professional society in his field, selected him to serve as its president. In the mid-1970’s, the same society chose him to receive their Award for Distinguished Contributions to Psychophysiology. (The award citation is posted here.) Yet Dad could hardly have been more modest and humble about his career and scientific achievements. When one of Dad’s graduate students discovered a fatal flaw in his theory of the mechanisms underlying the GSR, he presented the argument against his own theory at an annual meeting of that same professional society. He didn’t tell the audience in advance what his conclusion would be, he simply presented the argument step by step. There was considerable suspense, because in this circle his theory was very well-known. As he neared the end, the audience became increasingly aware of where he was headed. In the very last sentence, he announced that his theory had thus been refuted. For his integrity, he received a standing ovation. (He later went on to develop a better theory.) That integrity as a scientist was a reflection of his core integrity as a person. Dad (and Mom, too) had little tolerance for lying even by omission, nor for dissembling, shading of the truth, self-deception, nor even wishful thinking—and they did all they could to pass these values on their children.

Speaking of not shading the truth, Mom and Dad were not perfect. They could be feisty, sometimes overly so. Maybe this was just a consequence of the intensity of their emotional lives and personalities, and in any case we love them for all that they were.

Like Mom, Dad was deeply involved with his children. There was a deep, multi-faceted emotional connection, though in Dad’s case this was forged more through talking about things than about people. He took us fishing and camping, taught us sailing, and helped us repair toys and, later, cars. When Dad took a short course in special relativity theory in the mid-1960’s, he explained some of the bare basics to Ralph and me after dinner, in terms that fourteen-year-olds could understand. He wanted us to share his excitement and wonder—and we did. When any of us were going through difficulties, we could always talk it through with him, and he gave excellent advice. With Dad, too, we loved and felt loved.

Most of all, Mom and Dad loved one another. Each was the other’s greatest joy. How wonderful, that they had seventy-two years of marriage together!

Mom and Dad deeply touched the lives of many, many people. All of us will miss them.