Just after 9:30 PM this evening my father, Abraham Kuperman, died. He is survived by three children, his daughter Marilyn and sons Gil and Larry, eight grandchildren and three great-grandchildren. My mother proceeded him in death. He was 97 years old. He touched the lives of many people with his warmth and humor and will be missed.
Abraham was born in 1908, in Czarist Russia. His father, my grandfather, was in a prison camp in Siberia at the time of his birth. The family would emigrate to America, with first my grandfather and then the remainder of the family coming over. My father lived in this country since 1913. Arriving with virtually nothing but valuing education, Abraham was most proud of the number of graduate degrees achieved by his children and their children.
Abraham lived in Fall River, Massachusetts, and the Bronx, New York, until his retirement. He retired to Ann Arbor, Michigan and most recently received care in the Bethany Lutheran Village, outside Dayton, Ohio. He worked as a baker, a driver and in New York's Night Court until his retirement.
It is impossible to compress a human life into a few paragraphs, certainly not a life of the duration of my father's, but he taught all his children to value learning, that laughing is the best alternative to crying, to never despair but to always "see what happens."
Peace.