Condolences on Father's Passing from Office of the President Staff (1990)
Dear Dr. Lamm: Fate has placed each one of us in the uncommon position of learning not only from you and your dear brother and sisters the true meaning of devotion to parents but has granted us the unique opportunity to benefit from the wisdom of the extraordinary individual towards whom your reverence was so understandably and appropriately directed. Thus, even as we are saddened and diminished by the passing of your beloved father, Mr. Samuel Lamm, we feel a sense of gratitude to the Almighty for the privilege of having known, learned from, and loved Mr. Lamm. And since we are too far away from your family during this week of shivah to reflect with you personally, we thought there would be, hopefully, some value in expressing our feelings and thoughts in this written form. Ida saw in your father both the qualities of humility and unassumingness. Whenever she would visit Mr. Lamm at his Riverdale residence, he would remark: “Ida, what are you doing here?” He always projected his true sentiment that he was grateful for her concern and made her feel special (his smile said it all!) even as he was truly surprised that a fuss was being made over him. Gladys saw in your father an unqualified sense of honesty and integrity. She recalls that when your parents still lived in Brooklyn, an opportunity arose where in dealing with a city official, a little “white lie” would have helped promote their case. She reports and was moved by the reality that “Mr. Lamm did not know how to lie. It was foreign to his nature.” Jeffrey saw in your father the personification of the dictum that respect flows to him that treats others with the utmost respect. Whenever Mr. Lamm would see Jeffrey, at the home or in the office, he would always greet him with “Hello, Dr. Gurock,” despite Jeffrey’s protestation that this 92-year-old man call someone 50 years his junior by his first name. Mr. Lamm dismissed that complaint with, “I respect what you have earned.” We hope that the teachings of humili…