Robert Janett and Wendy Janett
July 23, 2016
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org
Norman, we love you and we are all going to miss you. Your life should be an example for all of us. Enjoy the present, embrace your family and friends, sing, be prepared to go to war against tyranny, rail at the prejudice and the geo-political injustices in the world, think big thoughts, be generous, and eat a lot of ice cream.
Norman Martin January 16, 1924 – July 13, 2016
About Norman
Norman Martin was born in Chicago, Illinois in 1924, where he attended primary and high school. As a teenager, just for fun, he taught himself Dutch, first by reading children’s books from the public library and later, upon invitation of the Dutch Consul in Chicago, by attending parties with native speakers to learn the proper pronunciation. At the time, of course, he had no idea where this rather obscure language skill would lead him in the future.
At age 16, he entered the Central YMCA College in Chicago and the next year the University of Chicago, both on full academic scholarships. In 1943, he enlisted in the Army and fought in Normandy, Belgium and Germany and was severely injured. He was discharged in 1945, a decorated war veteran, after the end of the war.
After returning to the US, Norman obtained his Master’s degree in philosophy at the University of Chicago. In 1949, he was awarded a Fulbright scholarship to study mathematical logic at the University of Amsterdam, in the Netherlands. While there he met Emilia, a Dutch mathematics student, in July 1950. Emilia was seeking information regarding study in the US, and she initiated their first meeting on the advice of a mutual friend. Norman was immediately and permanently smitten with her, and they were married forty days later. In September he moved to Urbana, IL, to begin a teaching position at the University of Illinois. The following month his bride followed, and the couple happily settled into their new life together.
In the spring of 1951, Norman received an opportunity to teach at UCLA while finishing his PhD dissertation in logic. The couple said goodbye to his family in Chicago and undertook the long but beautiful train trip to California. They made many friends and Norman successfully obtained his degree. But after two years when his appointment ended, he found himself in need of a new job. One Sunday, while reading the newspaper, he noticed a very improbable want ad for a logician at the research lab of the University of Michigan in Ypsilanti. Soon after applying he was offered the position, and he flew to Ann Arbor while Emilia temporarily stayed behind to finish her degree in mathematics. While in Michigan he learned all that was known about computers, which at the time was very little. After they reunited in Ann Arbor, the couple’s first daughter, Gabrielle, was born.
Norman was invited to join Space Technology Labs in Los Angeles in 1955, and he commenced an eminent career in computer architecture for the aerospace industry, designing computers for the nascent US space program, ICBMs, and other applications. He helped found Logicon, a computer, aerospace and defense contracting company, with several colleagues in 1961, as the computer era dawned. Logicon was an extremely successful enterprise, and it was ultimately acquired by Northrup Grumman several decades later. Norman and Emilia’s second daughter, Wendy, was born while the family lived in southern California.
In 1965, Norman decided to leave his work in industry and accepted a professor ship in the Departments of Philosophy and Computer Sciences at the University of Texas in Austin.After a distinguished academic career there, he retired in 1990 and was appointed Professor Emeritus of Philosophy and Computer Science.
Norman is survived by his wife of 66 years, Emilia, his daughters, Gabrielle Block and her husband Alan Block, and Wendy Janett and her husband Robert Janett, his grandchildren Naomi Salamon, David Janett, Hannah Block and Ethan Block, and his great-grandchildren, Anna and Noah Salamon.
Eulogy for Norman Martin, part 1
Robert Janett (son-in-law)
July 23, 2016
I took a lot of notes here. It reminds me of the story of the doctor giving a eulogy. He hand wrote his talk and when the time came to speak he couldn’t read his own handwriting. “Is there a pharmacist in the house?…”
Seriously, though. I can promise that I wrote this eulogy. It was not copied from anyone else’s eulogy.
It feels comforting to be back in this sanctuary, in this church in which Emilia and Norman have been members for fifty years. They helped build this sanctuary, so this space is very special to the family and is a fitting venue for today’s memorial service.
Who better to spend time with at the end of life, contemplating the meaning of life and death, than a philosopher. Norman Martin was an extraordinary man, a very complex man, brilliant, generous, a man who was gifted in so many ways. Philosopher, mathematician, logician, computer science pioneer, rocket scientist, entrepreneur. He lived a long a full life. Normally we define genius is an average student with a Jewish mother. And Norman did have a Jewish mother. But he was a true genius. We celebrate his life today even as we mourn his death.
I want to tell you a story about Norman’s life that starts with recent events, takes us back 72 years, and then returns us to the present.
The past few months were not easy. My father-in-law was on a revolving door in and out of the hospital and each time he was in the hospital he got noticeably weaker. His final hospitalization told us why. It turned out that he was harboring a chronic form of leukemia. It was not diagnosed until it caused a very severe and life threatening anemia. He was treated gently but aggressively until they could give him a drug to knock down some of the leukemia cells and thereby stabilize the anemia. So he was in the hospital for a week and a half. Wendy and I came to Texas during the crisis, followed soon by Gabby. We wanted to spend time with him because we knew the situation was grave and we didn’t know if we’d get another chance. As it turned out, it was our last visit with him. But we were able to help coordinate a transfer back to the Arbour, a nursing facility at their Westminster life care community, where he received loving attention from the staff and where it was much easier for Emilia to visit him. She could travel by elevator, because his Arbour bed was 3 stories below his independent living apartment.
In the quiet evening hours at the hospital, when everyone else had gone home, he and I spent hours in deep conversation. As some of you know, I am a primary care doctor and quite often I sadly find myself in conversations with patients facing serious illness and difficult decisions. These discussions often revolve around care choices at the end of life. But as a doctor, I have limited time with these patients. It is unusual to have the luxury of time to talk with someone for an hour without interruption. So it was a rare privilege to spend hours on end day after day, in deep conversation with my father in law-a brilliant man who always enjoyed reflecting on profound issues-talking about the big questions in life and of life’s end. On the first evening, he asked me to tell him his prognosis. Sadly, I got it right this time and estimated that he had weeks to months to live-and it turned out to be weeks, not months. He shrugged his shoulders and said that he wanted to make the most of it.
I feel like I learned more about him in the last week that we spent together than I learned in the previous 40 years. A deeply caring man, he was mainly concerned about the impact of his illness on Emilia, on Gabby & Wendy, on the staff that was caring for him. He didn’t want to be a burden. That was his biggest worry. He was not afraid of death and was pleased that he lived an accomplished and prosperous life. He considered himself one of the lucky ones. This seemingly mild mannered man, this consummate nerd, this egghead intellectual, was also a warrior.
He claimed without irony to have won the Cold War. A real honest to goodness rocket scientist, he had important roles in the design and development of the computer guidance systems of Atlas, Titan, and Minuteman intercontinental ballistic missiles when he worked as senior staff at the Space Technology Laboratories in Pasadena, California. I remember when I first saw Wendy’s birth certificate from Santa Monica. Under father’s field of work it said “guided missiles”.
He spent his last few weeks reminiscing-reviewing some of the key moments in his life. His mind kept returning to his World War II experiences. His experiences in Normandy seemed to dominate his memory and the story.
In those late night chats, he found himself wishing he was 20 again, until he realized that when he was 20 he was lying in a field near Cherbourg, France, gravely wounded. He couldn’t swim and yet he volunteered for the army and landed on Utah Beach on D Day. He was a 145 pound infantryman, an assistant forward artillery observer. That part of France consists of fields bordered by earthen fences knee to waist high with hedges and trees growing on top. What the French call bocage. His job was to stand on top of these earthen berms to look beyond the hedges to see where the enemy was and to direct fire from the allied cannons and mortars. It was up on that hedgerow that he was most exposed and it was near there that he was hit by mortar fire-grievously wounded in the chest and shoulder by shrapnel. He kept recalling how it actually felt to be laying there watching him bleed his life’s blood. He had come to Europe to fight the Nazi’s and he thought to himself, “So this is how it ends.” It was a miracle that he didn’t die on the field between the hedgerows in France. He told me about being found by a chaplain who called a medic to help him; about treatment in a field hospital and then the painful transport down to the sea and across the channel to England for surgical care. As it turns out, Norman died on the day after the 72st anniversary of that fateful event in Normandy.
They offered to send him home after he recovered, but he declined. It was his strong sense of duty, his personal ethics and integrity-because he saw soldiers more seriously injured than him return to battle, and soldiers less seriously injured return home. So they sent him back to France to continue to fight the battles in Europe. Battle of the Bulge nearly did him in with that winter’s bitter cold. His wounded arm became paralyzed and he could no longer fight with the infantry. The Psychological Warfare Division of Supreme Army Headquarters took note of his ability to speak fluent German and tasked him to be an investigator in the Intelligence Section.
He was on an advance team that was assigned to enter Munich as soon as it was captured. His small unit followed just behind the battle front as it advanced through Germany, getting ready to begin their mission in Bavaria. It was on that route from Luxembourg to Munich that they became some of the early liberators of the Dachau concentration camp. He carried into old age nightmare memories of what they saw at Dachau. Along with less traumatic memories of searching out German documents in Bavaria, where he discovered the complete archives of the Nazi party of the region in the dungeon of Eichstadt castle, acting on a tip from a German girl with whom he was illicitly flirting.
The intervening time, from 20 to 92, was a gift. And during those late night conversation he marveled at the miracle of his survival in Normandy, and about all the good things that subsequently came to him in life. His love for Emilia and their long marriage. The pride that he took in his children and his love for them. Scientific and academic accomplishments. The seminal part that he played in the development of radar and guidance systems. His company, Logicon, that he started with a few buddies and is now the IT Department of Northrup Grumman. The countless students he taught and guided over the years as a professor at University of Texas. His knighthood from France as a Chevalier de la Legion d’Honneur.
His personal and professional accomplishments were astounding…
He was generous to a fault and freely gave gifts to many people. We also enjoyed giving him gifts. The watch with irrational numbers on its face (the Einstein watch). I remember meeting with the Ecuadorean general who ran the military health system. On his office wall was a poster of all of the Ecuadorean military insignias. I knew that he would love that poster and the general took it down from his wall and gave it to me to bring to Norman. It is still hanging on his office wall. I think that one of the best gifts we ever found for him was a baseball cap that said “As a matter of fact, I am a rocket scientist.”
One of my fondest memories is from time we spent together in Colorado. Norman and Emilia decided to celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary by bringing the extended family to Estes Park. We stayed in cabins and took advantage of the proximity to Rocky Mountain National Park to have fun in nature. Now Norman was not an outdoorsy kind of guy. One day the large family gathering split up into smaller groups to take walks or hikes, each to his or her ability. Emilia, Norman, and I took an easy walk through the woods on a relatively flat trail. While walking, he explained to me non-stop, for about two hours, minute details of the history of political parties in Argentina and Uruguay. It was not unusual for him to expound at length on such esoteric topics, as those of you who spent time with him know all too well. And I have been a ready listener to these sagas for forty years.
Well, we were so focused on his stories that we failed to follow the map. And we became a little disoriented in the woods. Not quite lost, because we knew that the road was to our right and down-hill. So we chose a short down-hill trail to the road. It turned out to be an extremely steep old stream bed full of loose rocks. Emilia was sturdy and was generally able to negotiate this rough and dangerous trail without much help. But Norman needed assistance the whole way down. Arm in arm, we picked our way from foot hold to foot hold. I was sure that we were going to end up with four broken hips before we got to the road. At least one of them might well have been mine! But we made it back with happy memories. Another survival story.
That family reunion was so great. A picture of the group hangs today over Emilia’s desk. And I was looking at it this morning. We all looked really good, not just the kids (who still look good today!)
Emilia deserves credit for sustaining him for all of these years, taking care of his every need. I am sure that her loving dedication gave him several extra years of life-because she relentlessly insisted that he get up out of the chair and walk. He hated exercise, but if he was going to get to the dining room for some of the marvelous Westminster food he had to walk there. No matter how long it took. And that walking kept him vigorous.
Norman delighted in strong flavors and he enjoyed spicy ethnic foods from exotic countries. But he hated his vegetables. At the end, he couldn’t really eat because he was too sick. He despised the bland pureed or ground food they were giving him in the hospital. He just couldn’t bring himself to eat it. But leukemia means never having to eat your vegetables, and he seemed to thoroughly enjoy the various flavors of ice cream shakes that we brought to him 3 or 4 times per day for the next few weeks. They were his only source of nutrition, but they did the trick.
Special thanks are due to his medical and nursing team, especially his oncologist, Dr. Cline, who managed to halt the hemolytic process with gentle interventions. This gave him more quality time for several extra weeks of life, and gave us the extra precious time that we had with him. He didn’t suffer. He used those weeks well, singing songs, being read to by family, watching TV and railing at the geo-political news on TV, engaging in lively discussions with all of us, at his usual high intellectual level. David Newton was a frequent visitor and was his usual entertaining self, keeping Norman engaged in erudite conversation and laughter. Norman was holding court with friends from is room in the Arbour at Westminster even on the last weekend of his life. He knew and we knew that his time was severely limited. But that didn’t stop him from experiencing joy at the end of life. And we can all take comfort in that, both for him and for ourselves.
Norman, I love you and we are all going to miss you. Your life should be an example for all of us. Enjoy the present, embrace your family and friends, sing, be prepared to go to war against tyranny, rail at the prejudice and the geo-political injustices in the world, think big thoughts, be generous, and eat a lot of ice cream.
Eulogy for Norman Martin, part 2
January 16, 1924 – July 13, 2016
Delivered by Wendy Janett (daughter)
Memorial Service – July 23, 2016
My father was the son of immigrants. His mother, Fay Kaplan, came to this country from Poland in 1908 as a young girl. Her father was a rabbi. My father’s father, also a Jewish immigrant, came from Ukraine as a teenager at about the same time. At the time, Ukraine was still part of the Russian empire, though many of its residents longed to return to independence. As a member of the Social Democratic Party since the age of 15, my grandfather participated in an uprising against the czar. Sometime thereafter, he learned that he was on a list of people selected to be deported to Siberia, and decided instead to flee to the US. He traveled on foot and, when he could, hitched rides on wagons with other travelers, all the way across what are now Poland and Germany, to the city of Rotterdam in the Netherlands, a distance of over 1200 miles. There he worked odd jobs until he earned enough money for passage to America. After disembarkation at Ellis Island, his name, once Kagansky, became Harry Cohen.
The families of both of my grandparents settled in Chicago, where they met, married and had two sons. My father was the younger of the two, and he idolized his big brother, Marty.
The family’s life was not easy. My grandfather was a union organizer for the necktie industry, and my grandmother was a laundress. They often struggled to find work of any kind to keep a roof over their heads and their sons fed, especially during the Great Depression. But my father was always consumed by books and learning, and his brother was his champion and protector. Both of these advantages stood him in good stead as he grew into a young man.
From childhood, Dad was the quintessential scholar, not only excelling in his schoolwork, but spending most of his free time independently studying topics he found interesting, such as obscure aspects of world history, politics, and the Dutch language, which he mastered to fluency. In addition, Dad took his personal spiritual journey very seriously. He developed strong personal ethics focused on honesty, integrity and justice. While still in high school, he became a pacifist and, for a time, a Quaker, and as the threat of war increased in the late 1930s, he joined the Fellowship of Reconciliation and the Youth Committee Against War. Even the bombing of Pearl Harbor did not immediately deter him. Despite his extensive mastery of politics, which made him more knowledgeable about fascism than other kids his age – or, for that matter, most adults – he was so passionate and sincere about his pacifism that when the draft was instituted, he applied for and was granted Conscientious Objector status.
In early 1942, Dad was awaiting assignment as a CO while majoring in philosophy at the University of Chicago. He had a special interest in Ethics and Kant, and in particular the concept of “moral duty”. In May of that year, he decided to reconsider, through study, the actions of the Nazi regime, particularly in regard to its policies in occupied Holland. By the end of that very month, he concluded that his moral duty to help defeat the Nazis outweighed his pacifist convictions. As a result he requested that the draft board reclassify him as 1A and volunteered to join the Army.
To his surprise, when he reported for Army service, his physical exam revealed a hernia and, hence, he was classified 4F and rejected. Although the condition was correctable by simple surgery, the government would not pay for it and his family could not afford to do so. He eventually found a social service organization willing to fund the operation, and in June 1943 he was finally permitted to enlist in the Army.
Once the war was over, Dad returned to the US and resumed his studies at the University of Chicago. It was then that he made what he believed was “one of the best decisions of my life,” namely, to continue studying philosophy, but instead of focusing on ethics, he specialized in logic. With his prodigious aptitude in math, logic was a natural fit for him. In making this slight turn in his course of study, the breadth of his career options instantly ballooned, though he couldn’t have known how much at the time, from a professional life lived entirely in the halls of academia (not that there’s anything wrong with that!) to being instrumental in the creation of an entirely new field – computer science. This choice would give him a wide variety of opportunities in both industry and academia.
Later, Dad was awarded a Fulbright grant for the study of mathematical logic at the University of Amsterdam. There, he met my mother, a Dutch math student who was considering studying abroad in the US. A mutual friend suggested that she look him up to ask him about US universities, and she did. When they met, Dad instantly realized that he had met the woman of his dreams. Before long, the feelings were mutual, and they married 40 days after that first meeting. Their marriage lasted 66 years, until he died.
My parents gave their children a strong sense of security. I always knew, even through the ’70s when so many of my friends’ parents and family friends split up, that my parents would never, ever divorce. They both took their marriage commitment extremely seriously, and for both of them, to violate it would be a breach of their moral duty. More importantly, they both respected each other deeply, appreciating their partners’ strengths and accommodating weaknesses. They were openly affectionate, and when they moved to Westminster, they quickly acquired a reputation as “the cute couple” because they always walked hand in hand. My father was to be completely enamored of my mother from the day he met her until the day he died. He truly believed that he had won the lottery of love by capturing the heart of his Dutch beauty – and he was right. A few weeks before he passed away, my father told me that he had probably been a terrible father. This is not true. Especially by the standards of the times, when fathers were primarily expected to be breadwinners and mothers were expected to be É well, mothers, he wasn’t even a bad father. We knew that he loved us and was proud of us. He had a special activity with each of us – with me, my stamp collection. Though my interest in and patience for collecting stamps definitely waned before his did, I loved spending the time together and having his full, uninterrupted attention. My father enjoyed collecting things, especially facts about those things. Though I have to admit that I never quite shared Dad’s enthusiasm for his hobbies, through stamp collecting he taught me to identify many of the flags of the world, and I enjoyed learning to remember the flags and locating the corresponding countries on our globe. (I still question the usefulness of this knowledge – maybe it will come in handy some day, perhaps if I ever go on the reality show “The Amazing Race”. Who knows?) As I got older, we engaged in many spirited discussions, especially about religion and politics, and I always learned new things from him, even just a few days before he died. In spite of what you may think, Dad, you were a good father.
A little later in the memorial service, we will pay homage to Dad through another of his interests, national anthems. Dad loved national anthems, and these two anthems had special significance for him. The Marseillaies, the French national anthem, was one of his favorite songs, and he requested that we all sing it, to the best of our ability, at his memorial.
And we will hear the Dutch national anthem. It may seem improbable that a poor Jewish boy from Chicago would develop a fascination for Holland, but that is exactly what happened. And as things turned out, if one believes in such things, it would seem that he was merely living out the mysterious part of life that we might think of as fate. Dad’s father literally embarked on his journey to a new life from the Netherlands. My father decided, rather arbitrarily, to teach himself Dutch, and a few years later changed his deeply held ethical beliefs because of the political situation in Holland, resulting in the life changing experience of military service in wartime. And, finally, the Fulbright that enabled him to study in Amsterdam and meet my mother, his lifelong companion, proves that, whatever the cause, his enchantment with the country was well founded.
Dad, we love you and will miss you, but we will look to you as a model of a life well-lived.
