My father's obituary I wrote after his passing on May 30, 2026

 I realize I should place here for posterity the obituary I wrote for my father upon his passing on May 30, 2026. He was two weeks short of his 92nd birthday. Since his passing, I have been super busy with helping my mother, who had fallen and broken two bones in her upper arm a week before that day, and handling issues relating to my father's estate. Here is the bio:

Bernard W. “Buddy” Freedman died just over two weeks short of his 92 nd birthday on Saturday, May 30, 2026. He was born on Flag Day, June 14, 1934 to Sylvia Casif Freedman and Max Joseph Freedman in the Brooklyn borough of New York City. The night he was born, Jewish heavyweight boxer, Max Baer, became heavyweight champion. Max Baer had a younger brother known as “Buddy,” and so, Max immediately called his son, Buddy. This was name that son used, along with the shortened version, “Bud,” for the rest of Buddy’s long life. In 1943, when Buddy was nine years old, Max died suddenly of a heart attack at the age of forty-five. The loss of the sole wage-earner left Buddy, along with his mother, and two siblings, Leah (later Leah Pariser) and Maurice “Moishe” (later “Mitch”), in poverty. Buddy started working as soon as he came of legal age of sixteen. His first job was as a caddie at the local public golf course in Newark, NJ, and then a library “page” at the Newark Public Library, the latter position he worked through high school and college.

In 1952, Buddy graduated from Weequahic high school in Newark after serving as Student Class president. Among his accomplishments, former First Lady, Eleanor Roosevelt, at the time a national newspaper columnist, accepted his invitation to speak at the high school about civic engagement. Buddy first met his wife, Christina “Tina” Centuori, at the start of high school. He saw her from across the room, and remembered, till his last days, what she was wearing that day. Tina became lead cheerleader in high school, and, in their senior year, she and Buddy became an “item,” culminating with them attending the prom together. After high school, the two parted for four years as Buddy attended Rutgers-Newark, earning top grades and finishing tenth in his graduating class of 1956. At Rutgers, Buddy, in addition to his library job, worked as a musician, and was a member of the Air Force ROTC, and, at one point, served as the Rutgers Wing Commander (Cadet Colonel).

Meanwhile, Tina, after graduating high school, worked as a dental hygienist. In February 1956, Buddy and Tina were reunited at a Hadassah dance. The two immediately started dating, and in April 1956, they became engaged. At the time, Buddy was set to start his military service in August 1956 in Texas. The then young couple thereupon married on August 5, 1956, a few days before they drove to Texas. The two would remain married for nearly the next seventy years, with Tina lovingly holding his hand throughout the night before he passed.

From 1956 through 1959, Buddy served as first a 2 nd Lieutenant in the Air Force, and, by the end of his service, achieved the rank of captain. As part of his military duties, Buddy flew B- 25 Mitchell planes, which, in part, inspired the name he and Tina gave to their first born, son, Mitchell Jay Freedman in 1957. Upon receiving his honorable discharge, Buddy started as a night school student at Seton Hall Law School. During the day, he was a middle school teacher at Chatham Middle School, in Livingston, NJ, teaching US history and civics. On weekends, Buddy led a society orchestra, where he played bass, and, ever the mentor to others, mentored young men in New Jersey to form their own orchestras. Their daughter, Shari, was born in 1961.

In 1964, the Young Democrats of Middlesex County, NJ selected Buddy as the first recipient of the John F. Kennedy award and in 1967, received the Middlesex County Jaycee’s Outstanding Young Man of the Year. In 1966, Buddy graduated from Seton Hall, and was seventh in his class of both day and night students. He then became a private sector lawyer at a prominent Woodbridge, NJ law firm, but left after a year when the then-new Woodbridge mayor, asked Buddy to join the mayor’s administration. Buddy became the first director of the Consumer Affairs Office, and helped enact a law that meats sold in butcher shops and stores must have clear bottoms. This put an end to the practice of putting fat at the bottom of meat sold in shops and stores. Buddy also personally helped those seeking government assistance to fill out forms, and personally ensured assistance checks went directly to those people. Buddy then became counsel to the city’s zoning board before ascending to the Business Administrator position (deputy mayor). In 1971, Buddy left politics to become a corporation lawyer for multiple real estate entities and divisions, and eventually the Prudential Insurance Company.

In 1985, Buddy, Tina, and their then-twenty-four-year-old daughter, Shari, joined Mitchell in moving to Southern California—while Buddy was still working for Prudential. Buddy, a lifelong Dodgers fan starting in 1939, went to Dodgers Stadium with his wife and children each year, something they had done back in New Jersey, when they attended Shea Stadium to watch the Dodgers play Shari’s beloved Mets. Bud and Tina remained in Southern California until 2019, when they moved to Rio Rancho, New Mexico, to join their son, Mitchell, and daughter-in-law, Jacqueline (“Jackie”).

In 1988, following his suffering a heart attack in 1987, Buddy left the corporate law world and went back to his roots. He initially became a substitute public school teacher, and then became a paralegal with the IRS District Counsel office in Orange County. In that position, Buddy mentored young tax litigators who revered his wisdom and support. After retiring from that last position at age 71, Buddy began working part-time for the federal government, teaching immigrants to pass their citizenship tests. In the ten-plus years he worked in this position, 100% of Buddy’s nearly 1,000 students passed their tests.

Throughout his long life, Buddy was a true mentor to many people. Starting in his government positions in the 1960s, Buddy helped many young and middle-aged men and women secure government and private sector jobs, including editing their resumes, making phone calls to prospective employers, preparing them for job interviews, and following up with advice and emotional support. He also inspired others to become lawyers, several of whom went on to highly successful practices. Along the way, Buddy never made an enemy, and was respected by every person who knew him. When he passed, nurses and staff at the nursing home facility he was in for nearly a year, joined the family in tears at the loss of a man they all adored.

Pre-deceasing Buddy were his parents and siblings. Surviving Buddy are his beloved wife, Tina, children, Mitchell Freedman and Shari Reitman, and their respective spouses, Jacqueline “Jackie” Freedman and Steven Reitman, grandchildren, Andrew, Shayna, Spencer, and Abigail, and his beloved nieces, nephews, grand-nieces, and grand-nephews. BuddyFreedman lived a varied, yet consistently loving and kindly life. Those who knew him will always cherish their memories of him.

Thinking about July 4, 2026 in relation to July 4, 1776

As we head into July 4, 2026, I find myself shaking my head at those who only see the hypocrisies and limitations of our various Founders on the one hand, and, on the other, those who only want to enforce mythology that renders the Founders beyond human.

For me, the best way to understand our Founders is to recognize the soaring and sometimes utopian language they often used allows us to also critique their hypocrisies and limitations. We should always be wanting to move forward with the best values and ideas they expressed, but always recognize how far we have had to go to overcome enslavement institutions and the genocide of First Americans they enabled and developed. And in that vein, recognize how far we still have to go at present.

Unlike right wingers at Hillsdale College, or throughout Republican political rhetoric, I don't fear or loathe critiques of Jefferson, Hamilton, Madison, Adams, Washington, or the like. I do say sometimes, particularly in academia, I see an overstatement of loathing of Jefferson in particular, or an ahistorical attempt to describe the Revolution from England as predominantly motivated by a desire to develop enslavement institutions. With Jefferson, Sally Hemings was the half sister of his dead wife, who Jefferson revered, and while the relationship was inherently coercive, we just don't fully know if that was the case. And Jefferson has not been shown to have indulged his lust with other enslaved women, unlike so, so many others in his position. I have seen academic writings where the historian writes describes Jefferson as a "rapist" of women. I find that so over the top and insulting, as even Annette Gordon-Reed, the Harvard historian most knowledgeable about the Jefferson-Hemings relationship, can tell us.

The second overstatement is wrong for two main reasons: First, England was not even close to abolishing enslavement institutions, and in fact there was more anti-slavery agitation in the northern US colonies than in England. Second, Lord Dunmore's proclamation for freedom for enslaved people was proclaimed from a boat almost five months after he was overthrown by Washington, Henry, Lee, and Jefferson, among others in Virginia. And such an overstatement of the Dunmore proclamation obscures the many northern free Blacks who fought with the rebels against England.

 
The sad thing for me about the 1619 Project is the bad history summarized above obscures its essential correctness, which is how British racist-justified enslavement theories and practices were largely a departure from previous enslavement institutions, and led to the horrible racism that still permeates much of our society today. The ironic thing is the 1619 Project obscures what I call the 1492 Project, which is the wholesale genocide of First Americans by the Spanish and British, and a bit by the French--and then the US government. For the main thing the US Founders (Massachusetts and Virginia alike) appeared to agree upon was the replacement, removal, and murder of First Americans. If one wanted to make a materialist argument for the Revolution apart from proclamations of liberty and autonomy, it is the anger the colony men had toward England for not letting them settle and remove First Americans in the Ohio Valley.

But let's not get into what Black Marxian historian, Adolph Reed, Jr., calls the "victim's Olympics." Both genocide and enslavement form a predominating basis for US political, economic, and military development, and we cannot simply elide that because it undermines the pretty words that our Founders used. What gets obscured in modern times is how the American Revolution influenced future revolutionaries. It remains a fact that revolutionaries from Bolivar to Ho Chi Minh and even Sub-commander Marcos would quote from parts of the Declaration or were inspired by the example of the largely white colonial rebels against the English.

My overall point is we should celebrate the Fourth tomorrow as we may have done in our youth. We should also give our current youngsters a chance to feel some pride in our nation's ideals. For me, there is a poignancy beneath the celebrations separate and apart from the vulgar and corrupt Trump being our president. I feel a poignancy toward commemoration because tomorrow is the 200th anniversary of the deaths of Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, and James Monroe, who died 192 years ago tomorrow. I remember I first learned this fact when scouring through a book of "facts" of our nation's Presidents, and noted the three men's death dates. My ten year old self said to my Dad, "Did you know this?"--and he, though he taught Middle School History, said he had not known about Monroe.

I don't go in for "numerology" connections in life. I am too much the materialist. However, I do enjoy feeling something mystical when contemplating how numbers can seemingly corralate to historical events. Yes, it is odd to realize Jefferson and Adams, the two men most responsible for the crafting of the Declaration (with Jefferson even more so), died fifty years to the day the Declaration was already being celebrated. However, ever the historian type, I must note the first signatures on the Declaration were on July 2, 1776, and John Adams wrote to his wife that July 2 would go down in History as a day for celebration and fireworks. I admit I never ventured too deeply how the Fourth of July became the day for celebration, though I am sure there is scholarship out there on the topic.

Anyway, I think it is important not to let the right wing and business interests completely hijack tomorrow's commemorations and celebrations. I think there is much to respect in the political philosophies of our Founders and to treat them as philosopher-statesmen. We know the contradictions, hypocrisies, and limitations of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Thoreau, Marx, Gandhi, and Russell, among others, and yet we still respect them (well, in the US discourse, we demonize Marx unfortunately). I continue to maintain there is no good reason to simply dismiss our Founders, either. Our Founders' writings, whether their public statements or what is contained in diaries and letters, continue to resonate, and both inspire and influence, our thinking two hundred to two hundred and fifty years later. That is worth remembering and continuing to hold in our thoughts and hearts.