In Memoriam, Bill Eisert

  This is the second time this weekend that I am sitting down to write on my laptop. Both sessions are related. Neither one is joyful. 

You reach point in life when you seek peace and comfort in the daily rigors, even if you recognize that, in retirement, getting older has its definite physical limitations. Things that were easier 10 our 15 years ago are now far more difficult to do. No matter how in shape one is. 

For example, trimming the hedges used to be simply a one evening event. Not any longer. 

Staying up for games that run later or are on the West Coast is all but a dream—unless there is a significant nap earlier in the day—and it still is not guaranteed that I will make it past 11:00 before my eyelids tell me to go to sleep. 

This is not to say that aging isn’t good. There are plenty of things to do, places to go which working full time might have inhibited. 

But also what comes with aging is the certainty of death. No matter how much desire there is to live life to the fullest, there are roadblocks to that pleasure. Those barriers happen for many people, in many forms. A clock ticks, in finite minutes.

May 25th was my daughter’s birthday. A day for celebration, even if she was off in California working. 

It should have been a happy day. And for a while, it was. Until one text changed everything.

Bill Eisert, my trial partner at the Office of the Public Defender in Elizabeth, New Jersey had been in the hospital for what we believed was something wrong with his legs. He was unable to stand and move on his own.

The decision was made to move Bill from Overlook Medical Center in Summit to JFK Rehabilitation in Edison. There he would receive the necessary assistance to help him walk again, if possible. 

On Saturday, Bill was being transported to JFK. Somewhere after he reached Edison, the unthinkable occurred. He went into cardiac arrest and never recovered. Bill Eisert was 77.

A funeral date has been set for Wednesday afternoon to permit relatives to arrive back in the country. I spent my disbelieving afternoon and evening writing a eulogy which I never wanted to deliver. 

I am fortunate that very few of my friends or family have passed away in my 73 plus years of life. I am also very cognizant that such a streak isn’t going to last forever. 

This death has affected me differently than many others. Because I lost a brother—even if I grew up without one. 

Bill and I were close. Very close. I understood him, and he could read me. 

We had so much in common. Our ages were not that far apart. We lived just a few towns away. Both of us married in our 30’s and we both had a male and female child. Our sons played high school tennis, and while their teams played each other, they did not directly compete. 

Bill and I shared so much. Almost every day we would eat lunch together in my office, or, celebrating the end of the work week, have lunch out in an event called “Friday Chinese” for the type of food we ate. 

We talked about everything and anything. I would bring obscure information to him and he would devour it. For Bill Eisert was brilliant, with an intellect so sharp and a sense of humor that ran deep. 

Our work wasn’t pretty. Representing juveniles accused of offenses which, if an adult, would be crimes, is one of the hardest things to do. On a daily basis, we toiled in an unforgiving environment where parents, judges and prosecutors many times were rigidly aligned against us, and our clients were angry and bitter. 

That is why we sought solace in subjects other than our work. Which included sports, playing tennis, running and especially crossword puzzles, which we treated like it was sport, whether we were in court surreptitiously filling in the blanks, during our lunch break, or on the train to a Senior Citizen day game at Yankee Stadium, carrying our subs we purchased in Cranford, his adult life home town. 

Bill had an affinity for sports which began in his youth, like so many of us. He was a native New Yorker, so his allegiance was to the core New York professional teams. Except the New York Mets—he disliked them as intensely as the Boston Red Sox, Boston Celtics and New England Patriots.

We could spend countless hours talking about the Yankees. We lived merrily through the Jeter years and then suffered since 2009 without an additional championship. 

Bill loved to recount that he was present the day Mickey Mantle hit a ball off the facade at the old Yankee Stadium. He lamented about the death of the holiday doubleheader, an event he partook in his youth. To him, Whitey Ford was the greatest pitcher ever to don the pinstripes, although he did like Mariano Rivera very much. The list was endless as to what he loved about his team and how we debated the merits of the roster, the outcome of a game or mere off-season speculation. He knew the statistics of certain players, and who he liked and disliked on the Yankees and the opposition was clear. 

We reminisced about the Knicks championship teams. We struggled with the lousy play of the Jets. And we groused about the Rangers. He had passing interest in the New Jersey Devils, and gave up on the Nets when they left the Meadowlands for Brooklyn. The Islanders lived on Long Island, which could have been Vancouver, as far as Bill was concerned.  

His alma mater was Northwestern. Bill would talk about the games and players of his era, along with the head coach, Ara Parseghian, who later became famous at Notre Dame, to Bill’s chagrin. He became a college fan at Northwestern after a short football playing career in Fair Lawn, New Jersey, where he was raised after his family moved from Manhattan.

But he became a bigger fan of Rutgers, his law school university. His parents had tickets to football games, and so did Bill. I was fortunate enough to go with him to some of the most memorable games—the Louisville and South Florida upset wins; Notre Dame coming to Piscataway; and even going onto the field when his son was being recruited to play. 

We went to basketball and baseball games as well as wresting matches. We followed everything Scarlet Knights, exhaustively discussing how good or bad the teams were doing each season.

What separated Bill from anyone else I know was his love for Division III sports, which was enhanced by his son playing football at Williams College and his daughter playing tennis at Goucher College. I saw a Williams game at Wesleyan as Bill’s guest. I took him to Lancaster to see F&M play and when the Diplomats’ men’s basketball team had a NCAA game at William Paterson University. I had to be on my toes about NESCAC teams as much as the Centennial Conference, and even the hated Wisconsin Intercollegiate Athletic Conference or any other DIII conference. 

Now, sadly, I will have no one to simultaneously discuss what is going on with Williams or Amherst, F&M and Dickinson (although I have F&M friends for the latter). We would have been on top of the NCAA Men’s Lacrosse Tournament which ends on Memorial Day, a precursor to the NCAA Baseball Championships in Omaha in June. 

The Yankees are winning like crazy. He would have like that. Maybe this is the year for the Jets. He would be rightfully skeptical if not downright dubious. He wouldn’t be satisfied with the Knicks or Rangers. And if Williams lost the Directors’ Cup, emblematic of the best DIII college sports school, he wouldn’t have been happy. (The Ephs were in third place, behind NYU and Johns Hopkins through the fall and winter sports)

I have written my eulogy. It plays heavily on the sports theme. I am giving it on Wednesday at the funeral. He would have liked my words but hated being the center of attention. That would be the final indignity for him, a life lived long but not long enough. 

No more New Year’s Eve with him, eating Chinese and watching football with his wife falling asleep but always awakening just before midnight. No more excoriating politics, discussing the arts or going to a gallery. No more pontificating as only we could do. No more watching him happily inhale ice cream after dinner.

I still have my wonderful family. I still have great friends. There is a lot to live for. 

It’s going to be a lot lonelier without Bill.