Sam Fogel 1926-2008

My father died on Friday, January 25, 2008. He was 81. Today was his funeral. It was the mostly profoundly sad day of my life. Two rabbis eulogized him and then I presented a eulogy that I wrote this morning. Reading it was hard. By the end, I was crying so hard I could barely see the words on the page. My eulogy is below.


We are always surrounded by images of what a father is supposed to be. Movies show us the father throwing a baseball or football in the yard. Commercials show dads plunging down roller coasters next to a screaming kid. And TV, well TV has every dad imaginable. My father was not any of those people. He was the son of immigrant parents who worked hard and he worked hard – really hard. So many of my childhood memories are filled with my dad, the self-made lawyer, working. Despite this, we always felt his influence, and knew exactly how he wanted things done. His goals for us were simple. He was a product of the Depression-era generation he grew up in: he wanted things to be better for us than they were for him. And he wanted us to all do better than he did. That was all a tall order.

Sam Fogel graduated from Huntington High School as a junior and finished 7th in his class. He was 16. He finished his undergraduate and law studies at Indiana University in Bloomington in 5 years. He moved back to Fort Wayne and began practicing law. A tall order for the future Fogel children to measure up to.

Throughout our childhood the stress was on getting A’s and doing well. He wanted the best for us.

So many memories are in my head. My dad introduced me to photography at a very young age. I have such funny memories of him setting up weird lighting in my sister’s room to take pictures of us and I have the pictures to prove it. And of hundreds of boxes of slides. He was so proud of me when I was taking pictures for my high school paper and yearbook. But the camera I used, I bought. He made me earn the money myself to pay for the cameras so I would know the value of a dollar. He stressed that too.

He also introduced me to the law. I started working in my dad’s office at a young age doing odd jobs. But that wasn’t his point. He would take me to the courthouse with him, even in high school. Everyone knew him and he introduced me to everyone. In college, I started out majoring in business convinced I would never work a day in my life without it. I remember a really scary phone call I made home sophomore year after one more accounting class had taken me down. I called to say I wanted to switch majors to English and then I wanted to go to law school. Why was I scared? He was thrilled. He had double majored in political science and speech when he was at IU. And I wanted to go to law school. That summer, I worked with him again and he taught me how to read cases and he showed me how to do research. Once I got to law school he was always there when I needed help. It turns out, law school wasn’t easy.

My law school graduation was a day we shared. He never had a graduation so we photographed him in my cap and gown. And then we stood on the law school steps as I prepared to move to California and I told him I loved him. He so rarely said those words, but on that day he told me he loved me too.

Things turned out the way he wanted, all three of us went to college and graduate school. We had jobs that he was so proud to tell other people about and we surrounded him with eight grandchildren.

Two recent memories. On his 80th birthday, I came to Ft. Wayne and we spent the day driving first to Wabash to see his grandfather, Jacob Fogel’s grave. We put stones there together. Then we drove around Huntington looking for all the houses he remembered living in as a kid. There were a lot of them. And we took pictures. The other thing I did was keep a video camera running the entire time we drove. I haven’t watched the tape. I never wanted to. But now, I will.

The last time I saw my dad was about a month ago. My 7 year old son Sammy and I came in and spent a very busy day with my dad. We went out to lunch; we tried a new coffee place and later went out for dinner, a movie and ice cream. He was so upbeat that day and was having so much fun. The whole time I kept looking back and forth between my dad and my son and I just felt that it would turn out to be what it was – the last time I saw him.

Dad, I miss you, I love you and I thank for all the things you gave me that made me who I am today. I am so proud of you.