A very fitting tribute to Julius At the Church of the Presidents in Quincy Mass. My good friend you have left a proud legacy. OUR JULIUS I was not supposed to be giving this eulogy today for our good friend Julius. He was supposed to give mine someday. He should have outlived me by several years. It was a cruel twist of fate that took him from us and brought us all here today. I first met Julius during our first semester in law school. And if you’ve been thru the law school experience, you know it is a trial by fire. The friends you make there become the closest ones because of the bond that is created by surviving that trial by fire. And Julius was my closest friend. We got to know each other very well over the next several years, and my appreciation of who Julius had been and who he had become grew more and more over time. Julius Eric Friedman was from a small town in southern Ill. When he was growing up his family and friends called him by his middle name Eric. His father is Jewish and he always identified himself as Jewish; it was his paternal grandmother who took Julius to shul and kept his Jewish faith alive. She died when he was 10 years old. He often spoke about her and about how important being Jewish was to him. At the age of 4 Eric, as he was known then, was diagnosed with epilepsy. It was a severe form of the disorder and he suffered through several serious seizures and hospitalizations as a result. When he was enrolled in elementary school, they put him in the special ed class because the regular ed teachers did not want to deal with his seizures. Other kids made fun of him and bullied him. He was teased mercilessly about his seizures and he ended up dropping out of school. These were tough years. He hated living in that small town where he did not fit in and was bullied. He hated being sick and having seizures. But like a caterpillar changes into a butterfly, Eric transformed himself into Julius and Julius transformed his life. How many people do you know who dropped out of school and went on graduate from law school with honors? That was our Julius. He got his GED before his high school class even graduated, left the small town that did not want him and completely changed his life. He went to college and got a bachelor’s and master’s degree before entering law school in 2005. Eric was the kid who was always sick, never fit in, the one people made fun of and was bullied. Julius was an accomplished man, a deep thinker, a gifted attorney, the one that people respected and loved. Yet, as a butterfly cannot exist without the caterpillar, without Eric there could not have been a Julius. Our Julius was a man among men. He was the very definition of calm, cool and collected. He didn’t fly off the handle. He thought everything through, from complicated legal issues to his order at Starbucks. Julius took his time and gave everything a lot of thought. He did not rush in where angels feared to tread. He had overcome so much in his short time here. And he knew what it was like to feel bad and he never wanted to hurt anyone’s feelings. If he felt he had inadvertently caused someone any amount of discomfort, he would always apologize. He was not afraid to own any mistakes or miss steps; instead he took the time to learn from every one. That was our Julius. He loved to laugh and he loved to tease his friends and get a rise out of them. Just recently he found out that I can’t swim. He asked my wife “is it true that Jeffrey can’t swim”. She told him yes and Julius said “how could I not have known that? I could have been teasing him about it all these years”. That was our Julius. I remember when he was having difficulties with his cell phone provider. He called and was switched around to first this one and that one and finally he get a guy on the line who he thought might be able to help him out. Somehow he talked the guy into giving him his name and direct extension. Julius would call him every day. He’d say to me: “guess who I called again today?” “I just called him up to say Hi and ask how things were going?” That was our Julius. When he would run into someone who was a real jerk to him, he would remain very calm and just find a way to mess with him. He had to negotiate with another attorney on the opposing side of one of his cases. The guy was a real jerk to Julius and he ended up yelling at Julius and said “you don’t even know me!” So, Julius sat next to him in the court room, and then made sure he ran into him several times that day. And when the guy left to go to the parking lot to get into his car, Julius followed him out. He turned to Julius and said “not you again, what are you doing?” And Julius replied: “getting to know you”. That was our Julius. He loved New York and treasured the time he spent in Brooklyn when he lived with his father. He fit in there, and he was comfortable there. It became his adopted home town. I’m also from New York. I lived in Brooklyn for part of my childhood and then moved with my family to Queens. We would spend hours comparing notes and stories about our time in NYC. He loved it there and was a huge Knicks fan. Not that long ago Chandra took him to a game at Madison Square Garden. He said it would always be one of the best days of his life. Julius insisted upon extended their trip an extra day so he could visit his beloved Coney Island. He loved Coney Island and would tell and re-tell the stories of working with his Dad on the carnie circuit. He always had a plethora of funny stories to tell. That was our Julius. He loved to make people laugh. He and I would call each other nearly every day. When I came home from the office I was always on the phone with Julius and he was always telling me about some courtroom drama he had witnessed that was truly hilarious. He’d always start it with: “do you want to laugh?” and I would say: “always” and he would start telling the story and I’d start cracking up. He’d always say: “don’t laugh yet.” That was our Julius. He started out life as Eric, a caterpillar that was not very attractive and had a tough life. He transformed himself into Julius, a brightly colored, beautiful human being, who like a butterfly, was friendly, but fragile. He left us much too soon, yet we are better people for having known him. That was our Julius
Posted on: Wed, 31 Jul 2013 00:04:54 +0000