In Remembrance

our creativity, kept us aware of world issues and taught us the value of a tight family union. This partnership of my parents passed the test of time though many trials and sweet memories. As a symbol of my dad’s devotion to Peggy, he requested that the gravestone that will mark their final resting place include the words “together again”.

The definition of family goes well beyond Herman and Peggy’s six children. They doted over their 12 grandchildren, making each feel special in their own way, and the family now celebrates 7 great-grandchildren.

Timothy Higgins

Over the course of almost a century, my grandfather Herman Stone saw more of the world from more angles than most people ever will. He was an outcast, a refugee, a soldier, a scientist, a pillar of the community, and so much more that I don’t even know about or know how to put into words.

I remember that he told us about the Torah portion that he had to read for his bar mitzvah. It was Genesis 12, when G-d said to Abram (who would later be called Abraham), “Go to the land that I will show you and there I shall make of you a great nation.” Around a year after reading that before the congregation, Herman left the lands of his ancestors and came to a land of promise. Here, in America, he would serve as a soldier and as a scientist, making this union at least a little closer to being perfect.

The Lord said to Abram, “I will bless those who bless you,” and I’d say that virtually everyone has benefitted from giving this refugee a chance. Herman helped to advance our knowledge of the material world and manufacture new kinds of goods that we still use today.

Grandpa taught me not just how to read, but how to understand what I read in more than one way. It was like the whole world was a logic puzzle and he could see it from every angle. He taught me how to analyze information and adapt to it in the way that you basically have to teach a child; through jokes, stories, and riddles. Even near the end, he was still at least a bit cleverer than everyone else in the room.

Even after surviving Kristallnacht , the Night of Broken Glass, and barely escaping the Holocaust, Herman never forgot about other people and how they might suffer. Whenever he taught others about what happened to his family, he always emphasized that the Holocaust was unique mostly in terms of scale.

People of every ethnic group have gone through some kind of hardship, and the prejudice and intellectual laziness that allow such things to happen still linger in humanity to this day. Our job is to keep such things from happening in the future. My grandfather knew that what happened to him should never have happened, and the thing he wanted most was to make sure it would never happen to anyone else ever again. Looking over nearly a century of life full of hardships and accomplishments, the story of my grandfather is the story he read for his bar mitzvah. He left the land of his forefathers and came to a land shown to him. Here, he helped to build a great nation. We now live indebted to the memory of Herman Stone and the only way to repay an entire lifetime of service is to finish the task at hand. To provide a world where no one suffers needlessly, and all have a chance to make at least their little corner of the world better than how they found it. To repair the world. Tikkun Olam This, and so much more, is the legacy of Dr. Herman Stone.