Eulogizing Ron Carner

 

Ron Carner,  May 19, 1939--June 3, 2025

I delivered a shorter version of this eulogy at Ron's funeral.

Please scroll to bottom for links to videos of Ron

Several times over the years, Ron said to me, “If you eulogize me, do not talk about me in the past tense.”    

I responded,  “You won’t be able to tell me what to do.” 

How could I have imagined the day I would be eulogizing you, a giant of a man, one who lived large and savored every moment of life with hunger for more? Ron was—is—a man who opened his eyes in the morning and thought that the sky had never been this blue, the birds had never chirped so beautifully, and there had never been a more beautiful woman to be found by a man’s side. 

It took tremendous energy to keep up with Ron’s pace of hopping on a plane to London to catch a couple of shows, and two days later start a skiing day on top of a Vermont mountain at minus fifty wind chill factor. Until his mid-seventies, there wasn’t a mountain Ron didn’t want to climb or a river he didn’t plan to raft down its white waters.

Did I mention Ron’s reverence of balls? There was not one he didn’t love—round, oval, rubber, or covered in cowhide—to throw, hit, bounce, catch, kick, dribble, or pass—or watch others do it. 

In the years he practiced law, the charismatic Ron did particularly well with juries. Older jurors viewed him as their son, young ones as a father figure, his contemporary males as the guys’ guy that he was, and the female jurors, oh, well, he was really cute.  

Ron grew up in a loving family, where he was pampered by his grandmother who lived with them, and adored by his parents and his brother who was five years older. A good student, a star athlete, and a favorite among both boys and girls, all Ron knew was acceptance and love. Not a single bad thing happened to him until the big one, when Ron was twenty-five, and his father suddenly died. 

It was from that river of  love that Ron was able to ladle out endless goodness to share—with me, the children, his friends, and the Jewish world.   

Today, June 5th, the day of his funeral, the Six-Day War broke in Israel in 1967. Holding his transistor close to his ear for days on end, Ron became aware of how fundamental Israel was to his identity as a Jew.

By the time I met Ron, he held strong Jewish values and was a committed Zionist, which soon found their purpose in his volunteer work for Maccabi USA. A born leader, who loved interacting with young people, Ron went on to devote 38 years influencing not only American Jewish youth, but also those in South and Central America and beyond. To advance women’s participation, it was not enough to just form US-Jewish women’s teams; they needed to compete against other countries. Ron travelled indefatigably to encourage and cajole Maccabi leaderships everywhere to form more women’s teams. Then he went on to expand international participation by developing the Masters’ program. Not surprisingly, the more mature athletes, enthusiastic to participate in their respective sports, helped fund the huge operational cost. Some became major donors when they witnessed the greatest involvement of Jewish youth with Israel and with Diaspora’s members of our tribe. 

With every participating athlete came a family and a circle of friends who accompanied them to the Games—and thus reasserted their Jewish roots. Every two years, when Ron walked into the stadium at an opening ceremony of either the Maccabiah or a Regional Game in Europe or South and Central America, he felt triumphant. His greatest rewards were when people told him how the Games changed their lives and brought them back into the fold of Judaism.

When I met Ron in 1978, all this was in the future. What captured my heart was not just that he was funny, romantic, and handsome, but that he was a feminist. He sent me to  “a Conscious Raising” group to navigate a world steeped with power imbalance, and then he proceeded to relinquish some of his own power in order to have a wife who was an equal partner. Cocooned in the comfort of his love, I grew wings and flew to wherever my abilities would take me. Only a secure male could do that.   

Above all, Ron’s core was our family, the tight unit we created. From our first lunch in 1978, when Ron and I surprised ourselves by talking about our future together, he forged forward toward that goal: he maintained three homes so we could all be together, shopped, navigated the children’s conflicting schedules, and orchestrated our activities. Ron, our patriarch, was a lifeforce. His delight was to see our four children grow into amazing adults, who are blessedly close.

Over the years, many people watched Ron’s awe of the world, his athleticism, and his full, multi-faceted life and said that if there was life after life, they would have liked to come back as Ron Carner.

They didn’t even know that he sang in the shower.

Ronnie, you were right. You cannot be in the past tense. You, your spirit, your generosity, and your moral compass will forever be present in everyone you’ve touched. Especially in me.    

# # #

  

LINKS: Please watch Ron live on some of the many videos publicly available:

Ron was very proud to be a recipient of Maccabi's Yakir award for his dedication and enormous contribution to the movement. Here is the link to him being featured as Legend of Maccabi of and another Tribute to him by Maccabi USA.

A great interview on Jewish Broadcasting Corporation (JBC) with Rabbi Mark Golub.

Ron was very proud when he was nominated for James Madison High School's "Wall of Distinction," populated by luminary alumni Nobel Laureates, politicians and Justices. Here is a link to his acceptance speech.

The New York Times obituary

The Debt

             In 1934, at a Maccabiah camp near Warsaw, Rosa, age sixteen, lost her wallet. In it was her car-fare back to her village. Shlomo, an eighteen year old camper, lent her the money.
            Afterward, they corresponded. She wanted to send him the money she owed him, but when he heard about her plans to join a “Gar’ein,” a core group of young people organizing in order to establish a kibbutz in the land promised to the Jews, he suggested instead that she give it to his sister, Sarah, who lived in Palestine.
            Fresh off the boat at the edge of the Mediterranean, Rosa and her comrades settled in the inhospitable land to toil the rocky soil and to dry swamps. They fought mosquitoes and malaria, and eventually deserted their spot and moved to another, then another, until finally they found a home at the foot of Mount Gilboa. There, they built a kibbutz far from the main thoroughfare of the country’s dramatic events.
            In all of that, Rosa forgot all about her debt.
           
            Rosa’s eightieth birthday was celebrated by her family. Rosa’s grandchildren gathered around her and asked her to tell them about her life. They wanted to look at pictures.
            Every bit of her history was stored in an old cardboard suitcase—the same one she had brought from Europe. Or perhaps it wasn’t the same one; Rosa could no longer recall. She hadn’t brought it down from the crawl space in the attic for decades. It didn’t matter. Now, with her grandchildren eager to hear about her life, she opened it.
            She was surprised to find there a sepia-colored photograph of young Shlomo. It had been taken by a professional photographer, and the young Shlomo’s features were distinct.
            “Oh, my God,” she exclaimed. “I forgot to give the money to Sarah!”
            “Sarah who?” asked a granddaughter.
            “Shlomo’s sister.”
            “What’s her last name?”
            Rosa no longer remembered.
            “What’s Shlomo’s?”
            Rosa shrugged. “No problem,” she said. “I’ll call Tel Aviv. It’s a big city. They’ll know.”
            She blocked out her children’s protests that things weren’t done this way.
            The next day, Rosa phoned her niece in Tel Aviv asked her to find Shlomo. He must have made Aliya—immigrated to Israel—because some time in the late 1930s he had told her that he planned to do so.
            “And what did this Shlomo do?” her niece asked.
            “Well, he trained at a Maccabiah camp, so he was athletic. He must have become a gym teacher.”
            “Why don’t you call this school on my street and ask where you can find him?” Rosa’s niece suggested, a bit impatient.
            “I will,” Rosa replied, and called the school.
            The school secretary was sympathetic to the story. “But we are all young here. You are looking for an eighty-two-year-old retired gym teacher. Let me give you the name of an old teacher who used to work here. Maybe she knows him.”
            “Do you know Shlomo, the gym teacher?” Rosa asked to old teacher in her next phone call.
            “Of course. I was at his son’s wedding. But Shlomo died several years ago.”
            How would Rosa repay her debt to a dead man? “What’s his son’s name?” she asked.
            “Yair Haberman. He was my student in third grade, as was his wife.”
            Shlomo hadn’t been Yair’s father, but his father-in-law, Yair explained when she called him.
            “Well, is your wife’s aunt Sarah still alive?” Rosa asked.
           
            In four phone calls she had located the family of he man who had lent her the trip fare in 1934 in a village in Poland, in a country that had been ravaged by war, of people annihilated by savagery.
            Rosa will call Sarah and will send her the equivalent of a car fare from Warsaw to a village that no longer existed. But in her world, in which simple things operate on a simple logic, nothing changed.
           
            (Story told to the author by Yair Haberman.)