For me as Oscar's son it gives a good feeling to see him happy. The picture could be from forty-five years ago. Oscar died forty years ago in 1964 at age 64. But death is not nearly so important as life. What is great is to see my father happy. Oscar had the early childhood tragedy of being in the Russian Cossack pogroms against the Jews, leaving that when he was seven by being moved to America with his family. In America in the Jewish ghetto of Brooklyn he was also attacked daily by gangs of Italian and Irish boys, and fought back. There was a block graveyard bordered on three sides by each of these immigrant minorities. The Irish and the Italians fought a lot and beat up their victims. The Jews were used to being victims. Oscar Williams fought back. He was known as the block bully. One time his sister found him lying in the street unconscious with a knife in his back. Oscar never told me this story and so I never got to ask to see his scars. Behind that warm smile of a man at last content with himself and his life is an earlier life not so easy on a boy becoming a man.

What is the message that a photograph conveys? The pre-Columbian native peoples of Mexico had a religious saying, "May my face reveal what my heart knows." Thus if you know your heart well and use it in life, then your face can become a magnificent realization of your true, realized nature.

Oscar has his usual trappings here besides his warm and wrinkled face. His standard white shirt and bow tie, signifying that he is both a respected editor and a literary poet. Note his well-brushed, full hair for a man of around sixty. It's still black and rich, and the hair-line has receded only a little. Of course almost everyone wants to live almost forever. Oscar did well to keep his hair as an example of his ongoing vitality. His secret was that he brushed it every day. This stimulated the hair follicles, he said.

Also in the background is a painting by his wife and my mother, Gene Derwood. These paintings probably do not exist anymore. I thought them weird and as a young man had no money nor any place to keep them, so I let them be donated to charity. I believe this painting is of a city after Atomic World War III. Oscar loved his wife and maintained a strong presence of her for the ten years after until his own death.

If I say anything more, it is this. During the shock of returning to New York City when my father died, on the day of his funeral I was alone with his body and have that image memory still of his face in death. It had just been revealed to me that Oscar Kaplan was born Jewish. Without any personality showing through now in death I thought I saw clearly his oriental features which I had never noticed in life. Yes, he seemed to be a Jew. I had prided myself in sensing among my friends who was Jewish or not, maybe because of my father's own secret identity hidden to me. I married a Jewish woman and we were close. Now here Oscar does not look Jewish. He looks too happy and warm, in contrast to most of the Jews I have known. Perhaps this means he had transcended his background and collective history by the time this picture was taken. It is a "strong presence" picture. I am happy to share it with you on this site. -Strephon-