Remarks of Diane Rosenbaum, Reed '71 and former Majority Leader of the Oregon State Senate

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 whole self to everything that he did and did that with passion and joy and kindness, too.

Certainly, all the remarkable things that a member of the Greatest Generation and being able to go to D-Day on the 80th anniversary, but then remembering those things. But his life went forward and was full of so much after that.

For me, knowing him often at Democratic Party meetings where he would use some of those skills he had honed here at Reed College and the Reed Union, and make sure that there was always a vigorous debate.

The procedural things, as has been mentioned just a moment ago, were always followed carefully, but also that, if somebody was being left out or stuck in a corner,  they didn't feel that way for long because most would come over in his very friendly, joyous way and say, I'm Mosh, and who are you? And so all of that was part of what he brought that that gave so much to so many.

He didn't just show up, though, with those characteristics, but over and over and over and in so many aspects of his life, whether it was the neighborhood association or whether it was Reed College or whether it was the Democratic Party at a convention or the lowliest of meetings,  just all of the things that he did were, were really remarkable and brought so much to us.

We say often that may someone's memory be a blessing.  But to me, I was looking at his face today and thinking that one of the things that I will cherish and not just a but that we all, I think, carry are that smile, that smile that you see up there, those crinkling eyes and that grin and that joy. And that to me just embodies everything that Moshe brought every day of his almost 100 years.

Something that we can all carry with us in our hearts, in our own lives. And his memory will be a blessing, but he will be with us forever.  Thank you. Thank you very much.

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