Evan's Eulogy for Dr. David L Marcus delivered, delivered March 30, 2012

This has been quite a difficult period for our family. Some of you know that my father's twin brother Harry passed away after an extended illness last Monday, March 19. It's so strange and yet so strangely natural that they would pass together. They came into the world together on May 30, 1929, and they spent their first nearly 30 years together.

They shared a bedroom, played in a band together, and they were bodybuilders together. They gave up their body building activities long before Dad met Mom in 1959, and Dad seldom talked about it, but in looking through his stuff yesterday, Mom and I found an index card dated September 29, 1950 that listed 20 of his body measurements at the time. In case you're wondering, his chest was 40 1/2 normal, and 42 1/4 expanded. And his ankles were 8 5/8". He may not have talked about it, but you don't save a card like that for 62 years if it doesn't mean something to you.

David and Harry also went through all of their schooling together. From elementary school all the way through two colleges (Sampson College and NYU) and Optometry School (The Massachusetts College of Optometry). And when they graduated with their optometry degrees, they were drafted and during the Korean War served in the US Army Medical Corps in South Carolina, where together they examined the eyes of soldiers for two years.

After the Army, they started an Optometric practice in Eastchester, NY, where Harry spent his entire career. In time, Harry met and married Edie, and Dad met and married Mom, and you'd think that would be about it for the twin thing. But it wasn't. They saw each other often, of course, but there were other things. They dressed alike, without consulting with each other. They both developed passions for opera and classical music, and there were so many other examples of a connection between them, which ended with their passing within 10 days of each other. My cousin Felicia, Harry's daughter, called it "the freak thing," although for some reason her father never really cared for the term.

Dad and Mom settled down in Hackensack, NJ where Abby and I were born, and then in 1966, they moved into River Edge. They bought a house with an attached office, so for the entire time I lived with my parents and for many years beyond, Dad had the world's shortest commute. There were a number of peculiarities having Dad working and seeing patients in the house. Probably the biggest was that when he had patients in the office, we could not be in the living room, or if we were, we had to be very quiet. Lots of shushing. And no TV.

At Harry's funeral last Thursday, Rabbi Weiner, who officiated, said something that really made me think. He talked about how many lives a doctor touches and improves. Dad worked as an Optometrist for about 60 years if you count his time in the Army, and by the way, his last day of work was the Friday before he took ill on February 20. A little back of the napkin math says that if he worked 50 weeks a year, 5 days a week, for 60 years, that's 15,000 work days; more when he was younger, fewer toward the end, of course. If he had 5 appointments a day (it was probably more), that's about 75,000 appointments, and I am going to estimate 15,000 different patients. He improved the lives of about 15,000 people in his career. That is a legacy to be extremely proud of.

Dad often said, I don't drink, I don't smoke, I don't fool around. I spend my money on music. And he did. He had some extremely high-end audio equipment, and hundreds of CDs of a wide variety of classical and operatic music. He particularly loved three tenors, but not THOSE three tenors. His were Jussi Bjoerling, Gino Bechi, and Beniamino Gigli. While I really want to focus on Dad's whole life, I want to share one story from his time in the hospital. On March 9, he moved from the hospital to a rehab center in Saddle Brook. I felt that even though he couldn't speak well enough to be understood, he was still "in there" and his mind was active.

So I brought a radio to his room on Saturday March 10, and put on WQXR for the live Metropolitan Opera broadcast from New York. As soon as he heard it, he smiled for the first time since he took ill. As the opera played, he conducted in the air a little, mouthed the lyrics, and smiled broadly. We all watched him in stunned silence. And if there was any doubt he knew what he was hearing, about an hour into it, he said out loud, "Don Giovanni," which was the name of the opera. Soon after he also said, "Mozart." And when it was over and the audience was applauding, he said "Perfetto" which is Italian for perfect. In retrospect, that was probably the last really good day he had.

The last thing I want to talk about was Dad's involvement in the River Edge Lions Club. Some of my earliest memories are of Dad going out to the Maywood Inn for his monthly meetings. He served as President of the Lions, and later moved up to what I'll call County Government when he became a Deputy District Governor for the local region of Lions Clubs. He was a member of the Lions for close to 50 years, where he made many friends and did a lot of good for the community. One of Abby's and my fondest memories of the Lions is the annual pancake breakfast. For years, Dad ran the pancake griddle and made pancakes for everyone that were almost as good as the ones he made at home for us. In recent years, Dad was extremely proud to receive the Melvin Jones Award, the highest honor that the Lions give. He is wearing the pin on his jacket today.