I met Lewis Lefkowitz on a warm evening in 2003, along with his wife Judy, at Noshville in Green Hills. I was 35 and newly dating his youngest son Paul. The next year I married Paul, and Lewis became my father-in-law, my “Papa.” On our wedding day I changed my last name to Lefkowitz — something I never intended to do. But I wanted the same last name as Lewis. That’s what he meant to me.
I loved Papa’s laugh and his smiles. He gave two kinds of smiles — 1)a broad smile inevitably accompanied by laughter, and 2) a “frown smile,” legendary and much replicated by his sons. What made him smile? Rare steaks; the Rockford Files; singing; Vandy; Texas chili; his wife Judy; his sons David, Jerry, and Paul; their wives Lizzie, Sara, and me; his grandchildren Emmett, Carter, and Charlotte; his nieces Holly and Vicky and nephew Louis, and his late beloved little sister Emily .
“I’ve always been a non-conformist, just skeptical. I always found out that I would learn more if I didn’t believe everything I read in a book. And I always have.”
Born on December 18, 1930 in Dallas, TX, he was the son of Blanche Mittenthal Lefkowitz and Lewis Lefkowitz, and the grandson of David Lefkowitz, who served as rabbi of Temple Emanu-El from 1920 to 1949. He studied at Denison, then back to Texas for medical school and then Duke (where he met Judy) for residency.
When Lewis joined the Vanderbilt faculty in 1965, he decided to combine being an active faculty member with outreach work in the community. The genesis of this interest was his experience a medical student at the University of Texas Southwestern in Dallas. Assigned to labor and delivery at Parkland Memorial Hospital, Lewis and a nursing student were asked to make postpartum house calls to mothers and newborns:
“We took off in my car to west Dallas and did these examinations. They helped me understand something I had only imagined - that where somebody lives and how they live is as important as the physiological part of their illness or their wellness. That’s when I got interested in teaching and learning in the community, not just working or volunteering, but learning.”
So in addition to teaching and mentoring hundreds and hundreds of students as Professor of Preventive Medicine at Vanderbilt Medical School, Lewis also provided clinical services to places like the Campus for Human Development, Cayce Homes Community Clinic, Lifestyle Health Services (an STD clinic), Alive Hospice of Nashville, Vine Hill Community Clinic, and the HIV Clinic at the Regional Health Center for the state of Tennessee. After his retirement, he was thrilled by the creation and evolution of the Shade Tree Clinic. Shade Tree was the culmination of a dream for him — a place where medical students and the community could meet.
As a late addition to the family, I got to know Lewis after his retirement from Vanderbilt Medical School. For years he kept a regular schedule, continuing to teach, interview students, and work out of his beloved emeritus office in Oxford House. He also reflected a lot on his life and work to others— he loved to talk about his career, about his students, about higher education, about the lessons he’d learned from the practice of medicine in a community context. It was through these conversations, through listening to his stories, that I really got to know his philosophy of community-based learning:
“There could be no better or more fascinating and productive laboratory for all kinds of scientific and humanitarian endeavors during students’ terms in medical school and residency than the community. This world, outside the walls of the medical school, is full of unexamined problems seeking solutions, infinitely varied and interesting.”
I loved the stories Papa told about his patients, and about the importance of community-based experiences, and how the world was a laboratory for learning. I saw how much he delighted in his students, and the joy he had for teaching AND learning, and I realized I wanted to be that kind of teacher and learner, too. Seeing Lewis’ love in action helped me “actualize these potentialities,” as Frankl said.
Four years after our marriage and just shy of two years after Charlotte was born I entered Vanderbilt Divinity School. I decided to pursue theological education because of the opportunity to do field education — to learn in community-based settings and intentionally reflect on theory and practice. And now I teach undergraduates at Vanderbilt in a department committed to community-based and contextual learning. I’m grateful for the way my life was transformed by listening to Papa’s stories. And there are so many more like me, who learned from him.
The last few years have been challenging. Papa loved their home on Sterling Road, and when he needed more care and moved into Richland Place he missed his computer, his desk, his den, as well as going to his emeritus office. Judy, Paul, David, and Jerry lovingly and patiently cared for him. Paul loved spending time with him and visited him every day. At first he was able to take Papa on rides on the weekends; they would pull up in the driveway and I’d bring our cat outside for him to pet. He called her “Mrs. Cat.”
My own father died when I was 22. He, like Lewis, was a professor and an admired teacher. But he was troubled in ways that made it difficult for him to step outside of his own challenges. Papa wasn’t burdened in this way, and so he was able to step into his own curiosity about people, and about the real meaning of health, of flourishing, of justice.
Lewis found joy when he went beyond his own understanding and entered into experiences with others. He listened in order to understand, not respond. The care he gave to his family, to his students, and to his patients was an expression of tikkun olum — repairing the world. It was so meaningful for me to experience fatherhood from his perspective.
Mostly, I am so grateful for his three incredible sons and three wonderful grandchildren, who will carry on his name and his spirit and his love. Thank you, Papa, for everything.
“Love is the only way to grasp another human being in the innermost core of his personality. No one can become fully aware of the very essence of another human being unless he loves him. By his love he is enabled to see the essential traits and features in the beloved person; and even more, he sees that which is potential in him, which is not yet actualized but yet ought to be actualized. Furthermore, by his love, the loving person enables the beloved person to actualize these potentialities. By making him aware of what he can be and of what he should become, he makes these potentialities come true.”
Lewis Lefkowitz died on a beautiful Sunday morning, September 26, 2021. Contributions in his honor can be made to the Shade Tree Clinic.
