Very sorry to hear about your dad.  It was a privilege to meet and be around him a couple times this summer and I'll remember our interactions.  Lucky you are to have such great parents.

Jim Kieley

I am very sorry to hear of your father's passing. I truly think of the Manheim's as family.  Five years ago, no one did more for this scared kid from the East Coast.  You all put a roof over my head and recognized my talents.  I am grateful for the time I have spent with all of you.  I'll fondly remember the meals and parties I was able to share with your father.  I am unable to make it on Friday, but my thoughts are with you and your family.

Camryn invited me to Thanksgiving dinner.  If it's still scheduled, I look forward to sharing memories.

Yours, David Kwong

I just opened your evite hoping it was a birthday gala. I am so sorry. Will be thinking of you. 

Love Susan Solovy

I'm sorry to hear about your father's death. I have spoken to your mom and to Lisa. I hope that Sylvia is doing  well. It sounds like it will take her awhile to adjust. I will call her again. I can't make the service due to the distance.  May you find peace in your heart as well.

So sorry to hear of Jerry's passing. As you mourn your loss find solace in the abundant love your family and friends have for you.  

SO SORRY for your Mom and all of you hearing this news.   Please send LOVE and energy to ALL ...he was quite a guy.  I even managed to laugh at many jokes he had !   ( only for him )        I pray it was quick and Sylvia is doing okay.     

I am so, so sorry to hear this news. Holding you, Sylvia and all your family in the light. love,

Geraldine Dempsey

As you all know, Jerry was really, really special.  Born in 1923, he started college (at Illinois), then was drafted and served through the war, although he did not see combat.  On his way to Europe, he stopped at a USO in New York City where he met 16-year-old Sylvia Nuchow, a junior secretary at the Communist Party offices.  Hearing that he had no place to stay, she invited him to sleep on the family couch, where her mother found him the next morning.  He was fed lox and bagels for breakfast, the first he had ever seen, and a treat from which he never really recovered.

While in Europe, Jerry received more consistent mail from Sylvia than from family in Chicago (Jerry's mother having died just before he shipped out).  This correspondence led to an FBI file on Jerry and some further investigation (including questioning his high school chemistry teacher, who, when I was his student, told me about it and asked if Jerry was doing important war work, i.e., on the atomic bomb).   Upon Jerry's return to the States, and to the University of Illinois, Sylvia decided to attend college there too.  Shortly thereafter, they were married (Ellie, a student there too, witnessed the wedding); and Karl was born the following year.

Jerry, who during the war had been sent for further schooling at Ohio State, got a job after graduation from Illinois, with an engineering firm, but because the firm had government contracts, Jerry had to leave because he couldn't get a security clearance.  He went back to school, eventually got a doctorate in math, and built his career in education, among other places at Wright Junior College in Chicago, at Bradley in Peoria, at University of Michigan in the Upper Peninsula, and finally at Cal State Long Beach, where he headed the math department and held other administrative positions.

Meanwhile, he fought to get his security clearance, represented by famed lawyer Joseph Rauh.  The formal basis for the denial had been that in the Army Jerry taught that Russian weapons were superior to U.S. weapons under some circumstances (like when they were muddy).  The real reason of course was Sylvia's association with the CP.  When at a hearing Rauh asked that the Army pamphlet from which Jerry was teaching -- a pamphlet that said exactly what Jerry had said -- be obtained and introduced in evidence, the motion was denied because the pamphlet was "classified."  So Rauh went to the Pentagon library, where the pamphlet was sitting on a shelf, and smuggled it out to introduce it at the hearing.  The pamphlet was not permitted to be introduced, because of course it was still classified.  Years later, long after it would have helped Jerry in an engineering career, he did get his clearance restored, a story that was written up in the New Yorker, and then shown as a TV program on CBS' Camera Three.

Throughout his career, and his dedication to family to friends, Jerry was always open-minded, filled with curiosity, fair, and insightful, never doctrinaire or resentful.  When early on, in New York, young Sylvia gushed about Jerry to a major Communist theoretician, he asked to meet this supposedly brilliant young man.  Jerry did meet him and when Sylvia later asked the theoretician what he thought of Jerry, the theoretician dismissed Jerry as merely a "leftwing deviationist."  Jerry was proud of that label, and it fit.

love, Cousin Ed Levin

In 1964, when I was at Columbia College in NY, I had a motorcycle which was parked on the street.
I came down one morning to find a 2 foot Frankenstein doll on the motorcycle.
I mounted batteries in the feet and put neon bulbs in the eyes.
The eyes would blink every second. It took almost no power.
Jerry saw it and asked if he could have it.
I found out later that he used it to teach in class.
He showed it to his class and said that the batteries would last forever.
The flash took very little power and besides it only flashed when someone was looking at it.
How can you tell if it is flashing when it is not being observed in any way?
This was the lead in to the question of solvability - ie is the problem even solvable.

Jerry also had a great trick to get his classes attention.
He would lay his finger on the table and the smash it with a large can of tomato Juice (the side of the can, not the bottom).
He would then stand the can up on the desk (the can would now be bent in where it had hit his finger).
He would then go on with the lecture.
The whole class was then totally awake and staring at him. He wouldn't notice.
I wouldn't do it today because modern cans have reenforcing ridges, those had smooth sides.
The trick was to bring the can down at greater the 1 g. This meant that the liquid was on the top and a vacuum was on the bottom.
The can would bend and the resulting v would then protect your finger from the force of the liquid being stopped.
There was no pain at all. I've tried it. He who hesitates is lost.

These two stories were the inspiration for a short story that Janet (my wife) wrote called "Fermat's Best Theorem".
Jerry is the basis of one of the characters in it.

Please visit: http://janetkagan.com/fermat.html

Ricky Kagan