Moshe Lenske Memorial

Good afternoon everyone. I'm Diane Rosenbaum and very honored to be able to join you today and to say a few words about a remarkable person.    It’s been really a treat already for me to hear so many of these stories because you think you know somebody, but you really don't because there's so many aspects of this long, long life that I had no idea about.  And so it's just a delight to hear them and to be able to add a few memories of my own. I knew Moshe mostly through the political world that’s been talked about a little, but I was talking to some of the folks here today who have known him in various aspects, and we were saying, you came to an event and it really wasn't an event until Moshe and Hilda showed up there. And you would  look around the room and see, were they there?  When they were there, then you knew it was really, really going to happen.  And not somebody who just showed up over and over, Mosh did not just show up, but he brought his wh...

I am Kathy Saitas. For the past 18 years, it has been my great good fortune to work in Reed’s advancement office as a charitable gift planner. It has been a complete pleasure--and honor--to have known so many alumni… going all the way back to the early 1930s and in every decade in between. When I started at Reed, a friend and former staff member just laughed at me: Working at Reed is not a job, she said, it is a full body contact sport. She was right --- I can say from experience that Reedies are certainly passionate, incredibly smart …. and just so much fun. And Moshe, as you heard from others, occupies a singular place in the Reed pantheon. But, I first met Moshe when I was working as a young lawyer downtown. Moshe confused me with my colleague Laura, and softly yoo-hooed in my direction-- Laaa-uuu--rrra, he--llo. I knew who he was, even if he didn't know me. I walked up and introduced myself. Hi Mr. Lenske, I am Kathy Saitas. I think you might have thought I was Laura Liebman. M...

 Good afternoon.  I met Moshe Lenske in 2006, when we served together on Reed's Alumni Board. I quickly learned that this vibrant, humorous, friendly guy was all by himself as much a Reed tradition as the Doyle Owl. Both started life in Eastmoreland and both were seemingly omnipresent at major Reed events. Moshe was on the board ex officio because he chaired the Foster-Scholz Club--whose membership is all alumni 40 or more years after their class year. He and his classmates from 1950 were so much the heart and soul of the club that it seemed to me that they had been there forever, but I learned that Moshe had been chair for only a few years and had other interests to pursue. In 2008, he recruited my wife, Kathia Emery, to join the Steering Committee and then at the first meeting she attended and with no warning, nominated her to replace himself as chair. I, of course, believe he made a brilliant choice, but I'll confess that I wondered how he came to know about her organizatio...

 I first met Moshe as a Reed freshman in the fall of 1968, when I was working in the unsuccessful campaign to re-elect Senator Wayne Morse.  Moshe and his wife Hilda were active in the progressive wing of the Democratic party – and in later years he treasured his relationship with the Morse archive and Morse Park in Eugene.   The two of them made contact with many Reed students, giving them a home away from home, and bringing them into their circle.  So I recall spending time at parties with Reed faculty with whom Moshe and Hilda were close, including physics professor Jean DeLord and his wife Natalie, and econ professor Carl Stevens. It was Moshe who first introduced me to the concept of the Freedom Seder.  This was just after two DC radicals had crafted a new seder with political content in the aftermath of the King assassination; Moshe and Hilda used the paperback version of that Hagadah in 1969.  As a teenager, I was somewhat resentful of the obligation...