Michele and I are near the small town of Fairfield Bay on Greers Ferry Lake in the Ozark Mountains of northern Arkansas. We have joined a gathering of the Hoenigsberg and Hilsenrath families who have come together to say “Goodbye” to the family’s patriarch, Manfred Hilsenrath, who we know as Michele’s cousin Fred. Fred was one of those truly unusual people who is loved and touched by everybody who meets him. He was born In Germany in 1929 and came of age in a Romanian ghetto camp in Ukraine. His journey from there to being married to Eleanor, a woman he was madly in love with, in a beautiful home in the Ozarks, via Saratoga California, is both emblematic of the postwar Jewish journey and particular to him. Yesterday, at an event that was nominally a Memorial Service, each speaker – fighting off tears as they talked about their connection to Fred – wove a tapestry that was a celebration of an extraordinary life. A life that exemplified hope, triumph over adversity, the power of connection, and the power of passion. I am aware that I am an inlaw in this family, but the warmth and love of the family are all-inclusive just like Fred and Eleanor.