From a Gnat to an Eagle

FROM A

GNAT TO AN

EAGLE THE STORY OF NATHAN RUTSTEIN

edited by Carol Rutstein

Wilmette, Illinois

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Appendix

Bahá’í Publishing 415 Linden Avenue, Wilmette, Illinois 60091-2844 Copyright © 2008 by the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States All rights reserved. Published 2008 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper ∞ 11 10

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Rutstein, Nathan.

From a gnat to an eagle : the story of Nathan Rutstein / by Nathan Rutstein ; edited by Carol Rutstein. p. cm.

ISBN-13: 978-1-931847-46-9 (alk. paper) ISBN-10: 1-931847-46-0 (alk. paper) 1. Rutstein, Nathan. 2. Bahai Faith—United States—Biography. I. Rutstein, Carol. II. Title.

BP395.R88A3 2008 297.9’3092—dc22 [B] 2007041596

Cover design by Robert A. Reddy Book design by Suni D. Hannan

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INTRODUCTION

Nathan Rutstein was a man who de³ed the odds from the beginning of his life right up until its end. In the opening scenes of this book, the memoir he ³nished shortly before he died, he describes how he survived the gritty streets of the Bronx in the ’30s and ’40s by brawling, shoplifting, and playing ball. He had many scars from the early years, but none of them seemed to leave a mark. In one of the ³nal chapters, he tells how he de³ed the odds for the last ³ve years of his life, getting the most out of a heart muscle that was mostly heart and, as it turns out, very little muscle.

Nat was a champion in so many ³elds. As a teenager he was a genuine major league baseball prospect. My earliest memories are of the towering baseball drives he used to smash over the Benjamin Franklin Junior High School in Teaneck, New Jersey. To a sevenyear-old it seemed as though the ball had been launched into orbit.

But amazing feats in the sporting arena were just a narrow slice of Nat’s achievements. By far, his most beautiful moves were played out in the ³eld of human relations.

He found the Bahá’í Faith in the peak of his youth. He was being groomed as a prime division-one ball player when, as he was fond of saying, he “discovered knowledge.” In the blink of an eye he said his ³nal good-bye to a big-time sports career and walked out of the University of Alabama. It wasn’t long before he discovered the reality of the soul, and with one breath he blew aside the thick veil of his roots. He slipped through the opening with a quick Michael Jordan move and never looked back.

Few people know that as a new recruit in the U.S. Army, Nat bunked with a guy who was receiving favors ordered by Senator Joseph McCarthy. Completely unfazed by the mass hysteria of the time—not to mention the considerable risk to his own life—Nat

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began to secretly tip o² in·uential writers and journalists, who eventually took down Senator McCarthy over the a²air. Alone, and without a hint of fear, he took on the ³re-breathing dragon of his age and helped expose its falseness.

His falling in love with the teachings of Bahá’u’lláh miraculously coincided with his falling for the strikingly beautiful and talented Carol Kelsey. He told the story of the brown-eyed beauty who haunted his dreams, compelling him to date only girls with blue or green eyes. One night he opened the door to attend a Bahá’í meeting in Jersey and found himself staring into the brownest eyes he’d ever seen. They found the love of a lifetime, and they found the inspiration to follow their dreams wherever they would lead.

Nat shot to the top of the TV news profession. He got a break writing photo captions, then writing radio ads and later jingles (Carol really did that job for him) before moving on to become a news reporter. He hit the big time in TV news production, and it wasn’t long before he found himself pioneering the use of satellite news coverage in the headline-crammed ’60s. Along the way he met Martin Luther King, Hubert Humphrey, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, and Malcolm X. Looking down from the summit of that profession, he took aim at academia. He bolted to Amherst—a sea of PhDs, as he used to say.

He never ·inched in that harsh environment. Knowing little of formal research or statistics, he decided to begin teaching as a “gut-feel academic.” But he soon found this work unsatisfying and eventually found his niche at Spring³eld Tech, where he spent a generation helping young people to reach beyond their limits. In the process he rede³ned the rules of higher education and inspired students to loosen up and perhaps listen to their inner voices.

Along the way he looked into his own soul and revealed uncomfortable truths about inherent racism in America. He laid himself on the line with a courage that dazzled. He took to writing, adopting a folksy, earnest style to spin out prose on painful social ills. He gracefully transcended every ingrained aspect of his upbringing and

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his time. He took on any challenge and triumphed over it, usually with one e²ortless move.

Nat’s childhood home was unhappy at best. How did he nurture his magical gift with children? No young person who crossed his path failed to catch the twinkle in his eye, the funny quip, the honesty of his total concern. Amazingly, the violence and abuse he bore as a child was just another life hurdle that he took in stride like Edwin Moses in the Olympic 400-meter hurdles. He left his past in the dust, and with an unspoken vow he lived and breathed the opposite. (Thank you, Dad.) I wonder if he ever knew how hard it is for most people to do that? His gentleness and kindness, especially to the small and weak, were legendary among those who knew him. Wherever he went, from Detroit to the Philippines, he was besieged with people who had been deeply touched by him—an idealistic high school senior struggling to choose a career, a university activist taking advice about forming a campus pressure group.

He was present for all of them even on the far side of the seas.

Nat became an Auxiliary Board member (an appointed position whose role is to give advice and guidance to Bahá’í communities and elected Assemblies) and spent the best part of ten years crisscrossing the Northeastern states. I recall a midwinter scene of several people crammed into a Volkswagen Rabbit saying teaching prayers in a frosty parking lot in Hoosick Falls, New York. He inspired the friends to change their life patterns through disciplined application of the Bahá’í teachings. He drove that Rabbit from Olean, New York, to Scranton, Pennsylvania, to Augusta, Maine— sometimes in one week, in all kinds of weather. What drove him on? He had a message to deliver, and he was in a hurry.

In the last twenty-³ve years of his life Nat wanted to organize a grassroots movement, but he didn’t plan it out. He simply saw a need for people to process and come to terms with their own inherent racism in groups. The idea struck a chord in many hearts, in many countries. Thousands around the world learned and grew and started a lifelong process of developing their awareness.

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Nat loved to say things over and over again. As his kids we knew his stump speeches by heart. It often bugged us. I only now realize why he did this. When Nat discovered what he recognized as the truth, he instantly assimilated it. He didn’t hesitate or ponder. He took it in and acted on it. And then—being the supremely gifted athlete that he was—he followed his instincts and made the required play. For him it was simple: all he had to do was share that same truth with others. I think he must have seen that few could so thoroughly embrace a thing the way he did. But his devotion was infectious. People caught on, again and again.

I confess, at times I took exception to his writing style. He had a clunky, simplistic way of expressing himself that didn’t admit much subtlety or artfulness. I always told him to use more humor and storytelling because that was when he was at his best. As his son, I felt he was preaching, but I learned from my travels that people all over the world loved his writing. They embraced his passion and un-self-conscious style. If you visit places like Penang, New Delhi, Manila, or Port Moresby, you’ll meet legions of his fans. Trust me, I’ve met them. Many have asked me if my dad would mind them photocopying his books and handing them out to friends! Above all, they enjoyed his ability to be himself: comfortable, certain, committed, driven, and impatient for change. They were often inspired.

Ultimately, Nat’s unique gift was his ability to spontaneously and honestly take interest in any soul who crossed his path. How many times did he engage a checkout clerk on the major issues of the day? Whether you were a four-year-old child or a prime minister, he tuned into you—and then what did he do? He tried to ³ll you up with whatever it was you needed. His reaction time was perfect, probably clairvoyant. He had that Larry Bird-like ability to see three moves ahead. And the wonderful thing about him is that he applied his gift for loving to people, thousands of people, unconditionally, simply, and purely.

With the publication of this memoir, his friends and acquaintances can learn a bit more about who he was and gain insight into

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how he became the man he was. More importantly, the many people who will never have the opportunity to meet him will have a glimpse of the gifted, elegant, and purehearted Nathan Rutstein.

—Dale Rutstein

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CHAPTER 1

For the ³rst fourteen years of my life I lived in a neighborhood of the South Bronx that was more of a Jewish ghetto than an American neighborhood. There was never a Fourth of July parade. The only time I saw an American ·ag was on the stage of my elementary school auditorium. Since we thought Thanksgiving was a Christian holiday, the kosher butcher shops never featured turkeys.

I viewed life as a constant operation of physical survival, something my parents practiced energetically and turned into a quasireligion. They had good reason to adopt that posture, having lived through World War I, the Bolshevik Revolution, and the czaristinspired pogroms directed against Russia’s Jews. There was no sense of divinity in my home, only the will to survive.

My parents’ understanding of the meaning of life was having enough food, adequate shelter, and proper clothing. They made sure that I never went hungry, that my room was warm in the winter and free of heat and humidity in the summer, and that I had the clothing that would protect me from the elements. My parents’ greatest pleasure was earning money and buying the items we needed to survive. They greatly enjoyed inspecting the pantry and refrigerator and seeing it stocked with food. “In America,” my mother would often say, “you’re not forced to eat rats.”

In Russia my father used his given name, Leonid Regorutsky.

Before he came to the United States, some of his half-brothers had made the trip before him and settled in the Boston area. There were ³ve half-siblings living in the States. They used the name Rutstein, and when my father reached Ellis Island in 1921, he was listed as Louis Rutstein. There must have been some contact with his older siblings because he realized he would use Rutstein as long as he lived in America. My mother’s given name was Luba Vilensky, and her family became known as Wilson.

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Our dark four-room apartment in a brick four-family dwelling was an intellectual desert. There were only two books in our home, and they were never read from cover to cover (I did check out all of the pictures, however). One of the books was the G volume of an encyclopedia won by my mother in a local movie-house lottery.

My father bought the other book from a door-to-door salesman despite having warned me and my siblings never to do such a thing.

I was only eight at the time, and it shocked me to see my father break his rule. When I was older, I ³gured out why my father purchased that book he never read. That book salesman was not the ordinary peddler we were accustomed to, bearded and reeking of halitosis. The young man o²ering the book was tall, blond, and blue-eyed, wearing a neatly pressed light blue suit, starched white shirt, and yellow tie, and he spoke what my father felt was impeccable English. My father accepted the book in order to be accepted as an American by a real American. It didn’t matter that the book was a Jehovah’s Witness text.

Beyond these two, books were not a part of our lives. If there was a public library in our neighborhood, I didn’t know where it was. Any book was a foreign object to me. About the only place where there was some cultural expression were the synagogues— ³ve Ashkenazi and one Sephardic—in our neighborhood. The cantors singing songs in Hebrew was our only exposure to live music.

I had no interest in reading assignments. In the Bronx, I was a poor student, though my parents weren’t aware of my performance because they never asked me how I was doing in school. I barely passed from grade to grade and was relegated to the class reserved for the school’s dummies. Attending class was a frightening experience. There were times when I wanted to dash out of the classroom for fear of learning to be a failure. I was ashamed of being classi³ed a dummy. At the same time, I knew I wasn’t dumb; yet there was no way to prove it to my teachers.

I was a daydreamer and a sharp observer of my surroundings. I had questions my teachers refused to answer. I wanted to know what made the sun shine and the stars twinkle and what caused the

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thunder and lightning in the sky. I wanted to know why the Germans hated the Jews. I wanted to know what made my father so mean at times. And there were those metaphysical questions: What makes a human being di²erent from a dog or a gorilla? What’s the purpose of life? Why are there di²erent kinds of people? Is there life after death?

I remember being rebuked when I asked why every boy from kindergarten through the third grade had to wear a white shirt and a red tie. I stopped asking questions in class and convinced myself that school was a waste of time. I didn’t skip school, because I knew if I got caught my father would beat the hell out of me.

Fortunately, I did discover I could learn outside of school, as early as age eight. I acquired my deep interest in world a²airs from my mother’s father, Morris Vilensky, a tall, slender, gray-haired man who was a sophisticated and successful lumberman, spending most of his time in rural Pennsylvania and western New Jersey. He had ·ed Russia when he learned that the czar’s secret police were looking to arrest him because he was a close friend of a man accused of trying to assassinate the czar.

I always looked forward to my grandfather’s weekend visits, for he would seek me out, and the two of us would comb through the newspaper, checking out what was happening in the world. I remember spending hours with him discussing economics, geography, politics, and history, especially Russian history. We checked over maps, scrutinizing every battle in the Russo-Finnish War, which was raging at the time. He was certain that Communism would eventually fail in his former homeland. He believed in the American dream—he even changed his last name to Wilson and lost all hint of an accent.

His wife, Fanny, taught me things no public school was geared to teach, especially in the late 1930s. She maintained a small onebedroom apartment about ³ve blocks from where we lived. My mother, who was very close to Grandma Fanny, called her mother a “real Jew” because of her sel·essness and her earnest desire to be of service to anyone, whether friend, neighbor, or stranger. She

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From a Gnat to an Eagle

derived great joy from helping others. One incident that made a lasting impression on me was the time she learned that her nextdoor neighbor had been laid o² from his job. He had a wife and three children to feed. Every week for more than six months Grandma Fanny, in her seventies and diabetic, would go shopping and place bags full of groceries in front of her next-door neighbor’s door. The recipients of my grandmother’s generosity never found out who their benefactor was.

Beyond Grandma Fanny’s kindness, though, there was much in my environment that pushed me in a di²erent direction. My introduction to prejudice came during a celebration of Rosh Hashanah when I was nine. When I asked my father for permission to go to the Sephardic synagogue so I could be with my friend Joey, he shook his thick fore³nger at me and declared, “I don’t want you to set foot in that place ever. You hear me?” Two days later I learned why my father took such a severe stand. I overheard him tell a friend, “Those Sephardics aren’t real Jews because they don’t speak Yiddish; when they speak they sound like spics.” My mother had a di²erent reason for avoiding Sephardics: “They use olive oil instead of schmaltz for frying food.” What really hurt was my father’s demand that I stop seeing Joey, though I found ways of defying the order.

While my father harbored prejudices, he was also the target of prejudice himself in America—and he knew it. I witnessed one ugly incident when I was eight or nine. On our annual pilgrimage to Boston to visit my father’s three older brothers, two older sisters, and their families, we got lost. We stopped at a convenience store in Sta²ord Springs, Connecticut, about 120 miles from Boston, seeking directions. My father took hold of my hand as we entered the store. The store owner was a tall, slim man, bald and wearing a black apron over a white shirt and black leather bow tie. He was standing behind his cash register, his hands folded behind his back.

His steely blue eyes searched us suspiciously. He seemed like a man who had never smiled in his life. Frankly, he scared me.

My father, trying hard to mask his Russian accent and hoping to be accepted by this Yankee sourpuss, asked for directions to Boston.

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