Max Baer and the Star of David
Page 19
The doctor did not laugh, and neither did I. Max shrugged, after which all color drained from his face. “Oh God, here I go,” he said and, his face a sudden, ghostly shade of blue, he fell onto the bed, and was gone.
Max was buried in a garden crypt in St Mary’s Lawn Cemetery in Sacramento. Along with Jack Dempsey, Joe Louis, Max Baer Jr., Buddy, and Augie, I was honored to be one of the pallbearers. Several thousand people attended the funeral, and in recognition of Max’s World War Two service, an American Legion rifle squad ended the ceremony by firing three dry volleys into the air. Max was fifty years old.
Only on the second morning following his burial did I notice that Joleen had carved a small Star of David into the headboard of our bed, a bed she and I have slept in ever since, even to the day upon which she has been setting down these words.
About the Author
JAY NEUGEBOREN is the author of 21 previous books, including award-winning novels (The Stolen Jew, Before My Life Began, Poli: A Mexican Boy in Early Texas, 1940. and The American Sun & Wind Moving Picture Company), non-fiction (Imagining Robert, Transforming Madness), and four collections of prize-winning stories. His essays and stories have appeared in many publications, including The New York Review of Books, The Atlantic Monthly, The American Scholar, Psychiatric Services, Black Clock, Ploughshares, Commonweal, Moment, Hadassah, and The New York Times, and have been reprinted in more than 50 anthologies, including Best American Short Stories and O. Henry Prize Stories. The recipient of numerous awards, including fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, he was Professor and Writer-in-Residence for many years at The University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and has also taught at Stanford, Columbia, and the State University of New York at Old Westbury. He now lives and writes in New York City, where he is on the faculty of the Writing Program of the Graduate School of the Arts at Columbia University.