David Shuldiner (1949-2002)

The flexibility of a diplomat . . . the conviction and energy of an advocate.

—David Shuldiner

The sudden passing of Connecticut-based folklorist David Shuldiner on January 3, 2002, was mourned by colleagues, friends, family, and loved ones whom he had graced with his wit, intelligence, generosity, and care. Shuldiner will be remembered for his work to develop public programs and publications promoting vitality, creativity, and well-being among the aged. He will be known as well for his lifelong research and evolving public presentations on oral history and political and occupational folklife among Jewish leftists in this country. While he inspired many through his work and his ideas, it was his genuine warmth, curiousity, and kindness that endeared many people to him and for which he will be especially missed.

Shuldiner was born September 4, 1949, in Los Angeles, California. As a graduate student in folklore at the University of California, Los Angeles, his studies focused on immigrant and ethnic culture, occupational folklore, and folksong. Just after completing his degree in 1984, he moved to Connecticut to run a program on aging as a "humanist-in-residence." That residency evolved into a permanent humanities program that Shuldiner directed within the Connecticut State Department of Aging. Through it he developed countless public programs on culture, history, literature, the arts, life stories, and memory for elders throughout the state. Shuldiner described the nature of his work in detail in his article "Promoting Self-Worth among the Aging," published in Putting Folklore to Use (Michael Owen Jones, ed., University Press of Kentucky, 1994).

I first met Shuldiner in 1989; later, he invited me to serve as his coeditor for the journal he founded, Folklore in Use, which we renamed the Journal of Applied Folklore in 1998. I came to know Shuldiner as a colleague, mentor, and friend, and thus, experienced his many rare qualities. Shuldiner was at heart an optimist, balancing an acute political sensibility with humor. His frequent pronouncement, always said with a glint in his eye—that he was "a red diaper baby"—embodied this characteristic. The humor lay somewhere in epitomizing his approach to life and politics through reference to himself as a baby in diapers. At the same time, in all seriousness, it located his politics within the domain of daily life, something that he adopted from his parents and carried in his very bones. The undercurrent of the statement was pride in his familial and professional association with a generation of Jewish intellectual leftists who later became the subjects of his dissertation, "Of Moses and Marx: Folk Ideology within the Jewish Labor Movement in the United States" and many other publications and presentations.

Shuldiner's personal interests and familial affiliations were expressed in an ongoing fascination with the intersections of ideology, identity, and political commitment. Because he worked primarily with the elderly, those areas of interest converged with another set of concerns having to do with the relations between lifespan, memory and forms of expression that included cultural practice, social interaction, artistic activity, and political belief and action. In his interviewing, publications, and theoretical understandings, he adhered to a dynamic and dialectical approach, attempting to show how the experience of self, memory, and lifespan continued to evolve for the elders with whom he worked. Rather than establishing singular portraits of life and learning, he wanted to share with others what he himself experienced in working with elders—that their lifelong knowledge leant itself to continued discovery and active, evolving modes of personal expression, even within the context of the life review process itself. Shuldiner's exposure to these aspects of aging emerged as much through his oral history and collaborative research with elders, as it did in his interactions with participants in the programs he orchestrated in libraries, senior centers, and nursing homes throughout Connecticut.

In addition to his research and programmatic work, Shuldiner collaborated with regional folklore colleagues and, in doing so, made many a friend. In these...