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S. Walter Epstein, RIP
May. 15th, 2007 04:34 pmMy Uncle Walter died today of emphysema. He was a futurist, an ad-man, and a considerable tease. He delighted in bringing up what he read in Fortune as if he'd thought of it himself -- but this, too was a joke. He was one of the few people in their eighties to have a subscription to Wired -- not that he'd noticed when they jumped the shark after the dot-com bust. He loved snowclones - "X is the Y of the 1990s." He was the first to come up with wild and crazy ideas, like creating triangular cardboard stools for the 1969 World's Fair and selling advertising on them, and playing television on buses to captive audiences going to and from Atlantic City. In the end, someone else came up with the same ideas, and got the money, but he'd thought of them first.
The best memories I have of him come from Thanksgivings. Twenty years ago, he owned a house in Southhampton, Long Island, before the potato fields got bought up and McMansion-ed by hedge fund managers. Every year, it was like a Currier-and-Ives Thanksgiving; the small shops, the first snow of winter, my Aunt Marilyn's feast (she was the former art director of Family Circle), and my Uncle Walter second-guessing the football players on television. Uncle Walter was larger than life on those occasions; he would carve the turkey while making bold pronouncements about robots taking over cashiers' jobs, or teletext, or a new kind of golf ball. He was an optimist. He did not believe in the perfection of man by God or science, but he believed that once everyone was united in the common pursuit of shopping, evil and want would go by the wayside. In a way, he was a utopian socialist, a Fourierist, après la lettre, even while he believed himself to be solidly entrenched in the workings of capitalism.
He leaves behind my Aunt Marilyn and their children, Leslie and Maude. I love him, and will miss him very much.
P.S. - I should add that he was a Seabee, and that he erected many structures on desolate Pacific islands during the war. He was also ping-pong champion of his brigade.
The best memories I have of him come from Thanksgivings. Twenty years ago, he owned a house in Southhampton, Long Island, before the potato fields got bought up and McMansion-ed by hedge fund managers. Every year, it was like a Currier-and-Ives Thanksgiving; the small shops, the first snow of winter, my Aunt Marilyn's feast (she was the former art director of Family Circle), and my Uncle Walter second-guessing the football players on television. Uncle Walter was larger than life on those occasions; he would carve the turkey while making bold pronouncements about robots taking over cashiers' jobs, or teletext, or a new kind of golf ball. He was an optimist. He did not believe in the perfection of man by God or science, but he believed that once everyone was united in the common pursuit of shopping, evil and want would go by the wayside. In a way, he was a utopian socialist, a Fourierist, après la lettre, even while he believed himself to be solidly entrenched in the workings of capitalism.
He leaves behind my Aunt Marilyn and their children, Leslie and Maude. I love him, and will miss him very much.
P.S. - I should add that he was a Seabee, and that he erected many structures on desolate Pacific islands during the war. He was also ping-pong champion of his brigade.
