Ralph R. Feigelson

FEIGELSON, Ralph R., 103, of Boca Raton, FL, formerly of North Bergen, NJ passed away on August 3, 2012. Beloved husband of the late Vera Feigelson. Dear brother of the late Pauline Gaylor. Beloved father of Thelma Marin, grandfather of David and Jeremy Marin and Debra Thompson, and great grandfather of Zachary and Evey Marin and Katie Thompson. Also survived by many cherished cousins.

Ralph, known to his loved ones as "Ray", was born in New York City on September 1, 1908. He lived in Manhattan, Brooklyn and the Bronx before moving to New Jersey at age 14. Ray graduated from Rutgers Law School in 1930 at the age of 22. In 1942, already a seasoned attorney, Ray enlisted in the Army, eventually rising to the rank of Army Captain. Ray served in the Army's Judge Advocate General's Corps in the Pacific theatre and at several bases stateside. In 1945, while stationed in Illinois, Ray volunteered to join General Walter Krueger's Japan invasion army and was on the high seas in the Pacific when Japan surrendered. Returning to North Bergen after the war, Ray continued on to be a North Bergen Town Commissioner and Town Attorney, practicing as a lawyer in New Jersey for 65 years before retiring to Florida in 1995. He was also a member of Temple Beth El of North Bergen, NJ.

Services from Gutterman and Musicant Jewish Funeral Directors, Hackensack, NJ. Graveside Service will be held on Thursday, August 9, 2012 at 11:00 a.m. at Cedar Park Cemetery, 735 Forest Avenue, Paramus, NJ. In lieu of flowers, memorial contributions to Temple Beth El of North Bergen, NJ.

Below is a speech written for Ray on his 100th Birthday by Ben Levy:

August 31, 2008

Ray’s 100th Birthday

Ray, I’m truly honored to be here with you in honor of your 100th birthday tomorrow. Suffice to say, we’re celebrating an impressive milestone. There are several generations represented in this room and I bet for each of us the idea of a century is likely to be a little different. I think for some of us, it’s barely imaginable. So, I thought I’d take a moment or two to reflect on the last hundred years to help us all put your achievement in perspective.

You were born in New York City on September 1, 1908. At the time, another New Yorker, Teddy Roosevelt, was President of the United States. That’s the forty six united states, of course – Oklahoma having been admitted to the union the previous fall. The states of New Mexico, Arizona, Alaska and Hawaii were still yet to born. When you were 26 days old, Henry Ford produced his very first Model T automobile. Just a few months earlier, the mayor of Cincinnati announced to the city council that, "women are not physically fit to operate automobiles" – a controversial theory that has remained more or less unresolved to this day.

When you were five weeks old, on October 14, 1908, the Chicago Cubs won the World Series in front of the smallest crowd – just over 6,000 fans – in World Series history. A hundred years later, and the poor Cubs still haven’t won another championship. You were 57 days old when William Howard Taft beat William Jennings Bryan to become the 27th President of the United States. So that means when Barack Obama is sworn in this winter, you will have lived during 19 presidential administrations, just three shy of half of all presidents we’ve ever had.

When Admiral Peary reached the north pole the following spring, you were probably just stating to crawl. Other little tykes your age also crawling around at the time include Bette Davis, Edward R. Murrow, Jimmy Stewart, Milton Bearle, Simon Wiesenthal and Lyndon Johnson. In the fall of 1918, already a precocious young man (as I’ll reliably infer) you were attending grammar school in New York. Sixth grade classes had just begun when on September 11, 1918 the Boston Red Sox beat the Chicago Cubs in what would prove to be their last World Series win until you were 96 years old. Many have wondered if they’d see a Red Sox Championship in their lifetime. You’ve already seen six!

You lived in New York City for four more years while you finished middle school, living for a time on Nassau Street, in Greenpoint Brooklyn just a few blocks from where I lived some 80 years later and a handful of subway stops from where I live in Brooklyn today.

In 1926, newborns Alan Greenspan and Jerry Lewis were just getting used to being alive – in Newark, New Jersey and New York City, respectively. At the same time you were graduating from high school with your sights set clearly on law school. In those days, you didn’t need a college degree to go to law school – something that could have saved my folks some serious cash if it were still the case today!

Already more than halfway through Rutgers law school at age 19, you celebrated your 20th birthday on September 1, 1928. Two days later, Alexander Fleming discovered Penicillin. The next year, you were a law school graduate or, as you once described yourself to me, an “embryonic lawyer”. Despite an acute appendicitis just a few months before the big exam, you took and passed the New Jersey bar on your first try. Unfortunately, the response of history was not entirely auspicious. No sooner did you become a full fledged attorney, did the stock market suffer on October 28th its worst day in history to that point. It was Black Monday and the Great Depression was on. You lived with your folks at the time and you told me during one of our visits that every dollar you earned was shared with the family to help make ends meet. In your words, “you spent a lifetime to solidify a family and the end result was – all for one and one for all. The devotion was enormous.”

In 1938, an experienced attorney with a decade of practice under your belt, you reached the ripe old age of 30. Later that fall, the very first minimum wage law was passed in the United States, thereby paving the way for the establishment of the fast food industry. And that same week, a company called DuPont announced the name for it’s new synthetic yarn. They called it “nylon.”

And then, the following Tuesday, the martians invaded. On October 30, 1938, the great Orson Welles War of the Worlds hoax took place, convincing nearly two million people in the New York area that little green men had landed in Grover’s Mill, New Jersey.

But soon, a real war was on and, and advised by your local draft board that you were, as you put it, “hot” to be drafted, you enlisted the army in 1942. You served with honor and distinction in Chicago, Camp Ellis, JAG School at Ann Arbor and at Battle Creek in Michigan. And I’m sure I’m missing some other places too. You shipped off for the Pacific twice – the first time you made it to New Caledonia before Washington called you back to attend JAG school. The second time, you volunteered to join General Walter Kruger’s army for the invasion of Japan. You were on the high seas in early August of 1945 when a fat man and a little boy fell on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, effectively ending the war. You made it to the Philippines, with your orders still pointing you toward enemy shores. But in Manila, you ran into your old friend Jimmy McMahon – from North Bergen, New Jersey. Turned out, Jimmy was JAG too and he was able to hook you up with a job that kept you safely out of the line of fire. Thanks Jimmy!

You turned 40 in 1948, the year the State of Israel was born. In 1958, you marked a half century on the planet. And America launched its very first satellite off of it. In 1968, on August 25, one week before your 60th birthday, or 40 years ago last week, two young kids got married in Connecticut. My parents. Happy anniversary guys. A couple weeks after your 70th birthday in September 1978, the Camp David Accords were signed between Israel and Egypt. Around the same time, I spoke my first words. A decade later, when you turned 80, Vice Presidential candidate Lloyd Bensten made his most famous comeback when he told Dan Quayle that he’s no Jack Kennedy. (He wasn’t.) Later that year, in a development remarkable for its elegant simplicity and, confusingly, for not having been implemented earlier, Estonian becomes the official language of Estonia. And ten years ago this week, a few days after your 90th birthday, a couple of weirdos from Stanford changed the world forever when they founded a little company called Google.

It’s hard to sum up a century. But now we all know what 100 years looks like – and the verdict is in. Pretty darn good. You’re an inspiration to all of us Ray, and we all love you so much. It’s my sincere honor to wish you a very very happy birthday. L’Chaim.