Michael Joseph Halberstam, M.D.; August 9, 1932-December 5, 1980

Michael Joseph Halberstam, M.D.; August 9, 1932-December 5, 1980 Howard McK. Tucker On the evening of December 5, 1980, Mike Halberstam was senselessly murdered by a burglar in his home in Washington. While seriously wounded, he attempted to drive to the nearest hospital. On his way, he spotted his assailant and said, "That's the guy." In a gesture of rage, he struck Bernard Welch with his car, crippling the notorious master thief who had robbed more than 800 households in the area of silver, gold, antiques, rare coins and jewelry valued at more than $24 million. Michael Halberstam was born in the Bronx, New York, the son of Dr. Charles and Blanche Halberstam. His uncle Aaron is also a physician. He was descended from a distinguished line of Hassidic Rabbis. His father, who served as a medic in World War I and as a combat surgeon in World War II, was a powerful influence on Michael and his younger brother, David, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author (The Best and the Brightest, The Powers That Be, etc.). At the prayer and remembrances service at the Washington Hebrew Congregation, David Halberstam delivered a moving and eloquent eulogy to his slain brother. To understand him and the special kind of life he led you must, I think, understand his family and the kind of home he came from. His mother, daughter of immigrants, was a schoolteacher of exceptional qualities and courage. She turned the many trips her young children made across the country into unceasing adventures, and she was quick to invent games and always ready to tell of new cities to be visited and appreciated. The building she knew Howard McK. Tucker 85 best in every town we lived in was the local library. She gave her sons, in lieu of TV programs, The Wind in the Willows, Dr. Doolittle, and Stuart Little. His father, whose parents were also immigrants, was a smalltown boy . . . [who] became a surgeon and was a mythic figure to both his sons. Nutured himself and sustained by a small American town, he gave his sons a sense of the secret, sweet complexity that lay hidden in ordinary people's lives. He gave Michael a profound sense of obligation to others and of the richness of the community around you and the belief that the more you were given, and Michael felt he was given very much, the more you were obligated to give back. . . . As his brother I knew him long and well. He and I were locked in the most rare sibling relationship imaginable: a 40-year marathon of love and affection and support and rivalry. We were so close that 1 could read his thoughts and he in turn could speak my sentences ... he was not just a wondrous older brother, but he was a partial father as well. . . . He was subtle, developing in those boyhood years the most remarkable allergy imaginable. This was an allergy to soap and water which struck only at very particular times, roughly 6:30 to 8:30 at night when it was time to do the dishes. . . . I have said that the family was proud of him, not so much in his achievements and rewards, which were many, but in his life. The richness and completeness of it, the fullness of his spirit, the absolute lack of malice. . . . We treasured him because he was, as a doctor, a true human being. In an age of specialization where experts know everything of one tiny organ, except the body and the face that it connects to, he knew his patients and that patients had faces and fears. His words and his tone as much as his hand and his pills calmed and soothed. . . . We are proud, too, of him as the passionate citizen; the citizen involved. Raised in a small town, he treated Washington as a small town where he would know everyone and be involved in everything. Miraculously, in his case, this became true. He cut across every class and every group. He fought the construction of bridges, he saved public schools, he sampled restaurants, he raced in regattas, and he endlessly argued politics. There...