My Cousin Arthur died and his son posted this very sweet Obituary of a wonderful soul who I am grateful to be related to. May he rest in Peace. Arthur Meadow, accountant, business advisor, social and political activist and family man, died on June 15, 2013 at his home in Hackensack New Jersey. He was 92 years old. Born in 1920 in the Crotona Park neighborhood of the Bronx, Arthur’s parents were Jewish immigrants from the Pale, the vast lands of covering parts of Russia, Ukraine and Poland where many eastern European Jews were forced to live in the 18th and 19th centuries. Having separately emigrated to the U.S. in the early 1900s, Arthur’s parents met, fell in love, and settled in the Bronx where they had two children, Arthur and his younger sister Cecile. Arthur’s parents were garment workers, without formal education, and he was raised as part of the working poor of the depression era. Politically and socially active, supporters of socialist Zionism, and generally members of the “Jewish Left”, they were non-religious but culturally deeply Jewish, Yiddish-speaking activists who embraced the social justice struggles of the 20th century, from the U.S. and international labor movements, anti-fascism in Spain, Germany and Italy, and later to progressive liberal causes including the civil rights and women’s rights movements. It was from this upbringing that Arthur became socially and politically active in many organizations. After graduating New York’s City College, where he was co-editor of the school newspaper, he enlisted in the Air Force in 1942 and served honorably until the end of World War II. After returning, he became a prominent member of the New York Liberal party, at that time a progressive alternative to the entrenched Democratic Party, and ran for State Senator from his Bronx neighborhood, finishing a close second. He was also a life-long member of the Workmen’s Circle and served for decades as treasurer of the organization’s credit union. Throughout the 1950s, 60s and 70s, he continued to be politically active, organizing resistance to the McCarthy era witch hunts, supporting the burgeoning civil rights movement, marching with his family in rallies opposing the Vietnam War, to picketing stores in support of the organizing efforts of Cesar Chavez. Although he defined himself as a democratic socialist in the mold of leaders such as Norman Thomas and Michael Harrington, he was also a strong advocate of small business capitalism and entrepreneurship. He worked as a self-employed accountant, running his own private practice until his retirement at 85, and his clients were generally working and middle class individuals, families, and small businesses. Through his social and political affiliations, the majority of Arthur’s clients were from a growing community of Black and Latino entrepreneurs based in Harlem, the South Bronx, and Jamaica Queens, and he helped them start and manage a variety of businesses, supermarkets, Laundromats, and light manufacturing enterprises. Given his empathetic personality and business acumen, more often than not his clients became close friends, and he served them as business advisor and personal confidante. Arthur loved to work hard, often putting in 60 or more hours a week, much of it in his home office. Yet he was also a devoted family man, actively involved in the raising of his 3 children from his first wife of 40 years, Esther, and supporting and loving her throughout her 20 year battle with cancer that led to her death in 1990. He later met and married his beloved second wife, Rima, housing and caring for her aged mother, as well as supporting his first mother-in-law, until their deaths. Arthur is survived by his wife Rima, his three children Margery , Amy, and Peter, his four grandchildren Joshua, Elijah, Ruth and Mei, his daughters-in-law Hannah and Susan, his son-in-law John, his stepson Ilya and his wife Luba, and his nephew and niece, Rick and Andrea.
Posted on: Mon, 17 Jun 2013 01:01:20 +0000
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