Max Baer and the Star of David by Jay Neugeboren Page B

outgoing than Horace, was highly proficient at football and baseball, and later on as an actor in theatrical productions, whereas Horace, possessed of remarkably quick hands and feet, and a nimble facility with words, excelled at basketball and track, and was the leading orator on his high school debate team. It was in their finely tuned sensibilities, however, that they were most alike. They were, each of them, fair-minded concerning others, including those against whom they competed, infinitely curious about the world, and—always, always—innately kind, taking to heart a saying from Philo of Alexandria (known also as Philo the Jew), taught to them by Joleen, which Horace Jr. translated as follows (and which he has on occasion recited for me in the original Greek): “Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a great battle.”
    Both boys learned to read before they entered school, and grew up loving to talk about what they read. And they both took delight in telling stories, whether the stories were recountings of tales read, accounts of actual adventures, or invented. And in their storytelling they were ever observant of, and attentive to, those around them—to Max, Joleen, and Mary Ellen; to aunts, uncles, cousins, and grandparents; to schoolmates; to visitors and guests from the worlds of boxing and entertainment—just as they were to the wonders of the natural world—to the animals, gardens, fields, lakes, streams, and forests that, due to Max’s ongoing financial success, surrounded them throughout their growing up and their coming of age.
    In setting down my memories, it has been my primary purpose to tell the story of Max Baer’s life, and, in particular, of the love my sister Joleen and I had for him, and knew with him. Although tempted to indulge a desire to reminisce about events from the lives of Horace Jr. and Max Jr., especially their early years, I will leave the telling of such tales to them, knowing that my son, Horace Jr., for one, is more gifted than I in the making of stories, and in making sense of stories. I will, however, tell of an event in Horace Jr.’s childhood that proved significant to his lifelong passion for the study of Scripture.
    During the years we lived in Livermore, Mary Ellen took Max Jr. with her every Sunday morning to nearby St. Peter’s Holy Roman Catholic Church, where he had been baptized, and, when we lived in Sacramento, to All Souls Church of the Sacred Heart, where, at seven years of age, he received first Holy Communion, accepting Jesus Christ in the Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist. And during these years, Joleen and I took Horace Jr. with us several times a month to the Church of Our Holy Saviour, a house of worship attended by people of color.
    The last time Joleen, Horace Jr., and I attended church as a family, however—or rather, the first of many Sundays upon which we would no longer attend church as a family—occurred two Sundays before Christmas of 1942 (and four and a half months after Max and Mary Ellen’s second child, James Manny Baer, was born).
    Horace Jr. and I were already dressed in our Sunday best when Joleen announced that she had made a decision not to go to church on this morning, or ever again. Horace Jr. protested at once, but Joleen commanded him to hold his tongue, and to wait in the cabin while she talked with me—we were spending the weekend at the ranch in Livermore—and, taking me by the hand, she led me outside.
    “Where the beast of darkness once made his home,” she announced in words she had clearly prepared earlier, “the true spirit of the Lord now lives.”
    “And so?” I asked.
    “And so I no longer feel a need for others, whether priests, ministers, or ministering angels, to intercede for me with our Lord,” she replied. “I have, on this day, ceased forever to be a churchgoing woman.”
    “That may be,” I said, “and I know that when you have resolved to do something, there is little chance of my persuading you