Flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.
If there are angels, my friend RDG is singing with them (in his husky, cracked baritone).
I’m an emotional guy, but, like many men, my most frequently displayed emotions are anger and indignation. Grief and deep sadness I tend to keep hidden even from myself. I did not, for instance, cry at the death of my father, whom I loved dearly, or at the death of my mother, who loved me dearly but of whom I was long wary and suspicious. I have been fortunate that, despite my age and theirs, so far very few friends have died, and only one dear friend, the one about whom I am writing here. As I begin this Blurt my eyes are tearing up as I remember the many acts of kindness, empathy, and generosity performed by my beloved late friend — mentor, counsellor, beacon, teacher, guide, lighthouse, touchstone, and so much more, Robert D. Gamble, who died in Poznań of complications from COVID 19 on 17 November 2020. I have known perhaps three men I unreservedly regard as secular saints (perhaps spiritual saints as well), Bob Gamble was one of them.
When I began writing these Blurts a few weeks ago it was to force myself to get more connected with Poznań, the city where I live — but from which I have lived mostly separate, as an island — not physically separated, but mentally and emotionally separated. The separateness has been my doing. It has been a choice, not a necessity. I haven’t wanted to be here; I am here only because I have children here. But after 20 years of separateness, I have recently decided to undo it, or at least to try. As we say in Buddhism, nothing is permanent. Everything is connected.
As John Donne and countless others riding on his coattails have observed: no man is an island. But some of us try. My islandness is gradually turning into something else. Archipeligation? Penisularisation? Possibly even connection? To the extent that I integrate myself into Poznań life and make this my city, and not just the place where I sleep at night, it will be because I have been wise enough to follow in Bob Gamble’s shadow and to tread in his enormous footprints. (The man had very big, very wide feet. Like an elephant. For stability, I think; stability was certainly one of Robert’s salient characteristics.)
Even though I am nearly 70 and have lived in Poznań off and on (mostly on) since 2003, I have been fortunate to know only two Poznańiaks who have died on my watch. The first was my wife’s father. That was nearly 15 years ago. The cause was the Polish disease: alcoholism. We needn’t say very much more about him except that when he died my wife got to within about 30 meters of the funeral chapel where the service was about to be held, froze up completely, and wouldn’t go in. In fairness to her, she did go to the graveside ceremony a little later. I never learned what all that was about. Probably just as well. My wife’s family puts the “oop” in loopy. I thought my family was dysfunctional — they were (and still are, though in my generation there are now only myself and my brother upholding the tradition). But concerning my wife’s family, we are talking military-grade dysfunctionality. I will stop now on the subject of my wife and her family. The less said the better. The only other Poznaniak I have known who has so far died is Robert Gamble. He had many tiresome and long-standing ailments, some more serious than others, but he was generally as strong as a bull. But then COVID came along and that was that.
I know one other person who has died of COVID-19. He was also a Pole, a man I knew who lived in London, though he was originally from Kielce1 (central Poland, about halfway between Kraków and Warszawa), Czesław Doniewski. He died on 23 November 2020. It was a tough week for remarkable Poles. He was an artist (a sculptor mostly) who had somehow become a computer repairman. Needing to eat can cause that sort of thing. A truly lovely guy, very kind, generous, intelligent, and genuinely funny. He would sometimes work on my computer in exchange for a bottle of single-malt whisky that I would bring from the Duty-Free shop in the Poznań airport, and which he would then share with me. For several years each time I would go to London, which I used to do several times each year, I would always stop into the computer repair shop to say hello even if my computer and smartphone were working fine. Czes and I would end up spending hours talking. I remember once going on a wild goose chase with him through Clerkenwell and Hatton Gardens — I can’t even remember what we were looking for. Czes was spontaneous and fun that way.
Some of you may have noticed that I wrote “also a Pole,” because for me Robert, too, was a Pole, albeit an adoptive Pole — he had lived, worked, and contributed hugely in and to Poland since the mid-1980s, starting his life here a few years before the fall of Communism. The reason? The same as for most foreign men who end up in Poznań, a Polish woman. As with many of the foreign men in Poznań, things didn’t work out with the Polish woman, but he decided to stay all the same. What was it Tolstoy said about families? We all have our reasons for coming, and we all have our reasons for staying. And probably a few of those reasons make sense.
Yep, he actually dressed like that — not often, but almost always when he took his wares to book fairs around Europe. He was shrewd enough to know it would make him difficult to forget. He was modest enough not to realise (or, perhaps, simply to resist realising) that there was a great deal more than his kilt and sporran (and tartan tie, covered in the memories of a thousand meals) that made him difficult to forget. He was a big man, larger than life.
As I have said in at least one earlier Blurt, I moved to Poznań late in 2003, supposedly to work on the absurdly quixotic Poznań Synagogue Project, of which I, a naive non-Polish goy, was the prime mover. (Isn’t that redundant? Can anything be quixotic without being at the same time absurd? Of course, absurd and tragic are not mutually exclusive.) Shortly after arriving, I was given Bob’s name and number — I think by Alicja Kobus, balabusta extraordinaire,2 who, amongst her many attributes, had a very comprehensive Rolodex (remember those?). Like everyone else, I expect she has since transferred her contacts list to her smartphone. As a chore, I imagine it took days to accomplish. I wonder what became of the Rolodex company. Gone the way of the horse and buggy, probably.
Shortly after connecting with Bob by phone, he suggested we meet for coffee at what was Poznań’s best (and then almost only) coffee house, Cocorico on Świętosławska, not far off the Stary Rynek and just down the street from Poznań’s most over the top Baroque Church, The Minor Basilica of Our Lady of Perpetual Help, known to all in Poznań as the Fara, the Parish Church of the Old City, into which they seem to have stuffed as much High Baroqueness as there is in Saint Peter’s in Rome, a space more than eleven times larger. It must have been spring or summer since Bob and I sat outside. I recall that it wasn’t yet hot, but after a long winter of endless grey skies, the spring sunlight was too inviting for us to sit indoors.
Robert never talked about himself except by way of trying to put others at ease or to draw them out. He had plenty he could boast about, but never did. He didn’t even like to tell people his birthday, because he didn’t want them to make a fuss of him — by the way, his birthday was the same as mine — 9 March — something I didn’t find out until a few months before he died, after I had known him for about 17 years. He always remembered my birthday — which was, of course, easy for him to do. He was a gifted conversationalist, but not a raconteur. His gift was in getting other people to tell their stories, not in telling his own. He had a gentle sense of humour, and a wonderful deep laugh (like surf hitting the shore), but he wasn’t witty. He was highly educated, had a curious mind, and could talk meaningfully on all manner of topics, but you never had the sense that he was trying to one-up you. He’d gone to Harvard, but he always made it sound like just another American university, long ago and far away — which, since I’d gone to Yale, was exactly how I felt about Harvard, just another American university, nothing special. As we sat in the thin, sharp spring sunlight in front of Cocorico, the subject of religion came up — I suppose because we were two non-Jews, non-Poles talking about a Polish synagogue — and we discovered that we were both Episcopalians (as Anglicans are known in America).
Bob revealed to me that he was in the leadership — he later became head — of the Anglican Church in Poland. He asked if he could put my name on the list of members of the faith, assuring me that putting my name on the list would incur no obligations on my part, but simply reassure head office that progress was being made in Poznań. I felt a little uneasy about this, because, as I have elsewhere revealed, I had not only stopped being an Episcopalian but had essentially stopped being a Christian at some time around my fourteenth birthday. Still, I had been baptised an Episcopalian, I admitted that much. That was good enough for Bob — once an Episcopalian always an Episcopalian, in his view.3 I suppose there was, and still is, the chance that I might revert; best not to burn any bridges. (If you know me at all, or if you’ve been reading carefully until now, you may have realised that burning bridges has been something of a speciality for me — but I wouldn’t have it otherwise. I’m good at it, and it’s always best to do what you are good at.) Anyway, I agreed to add my name to Bob’s list. After which we talked about other things. Right at the end, I casually asked, “By the way, how many names are there on the list?” I believe his answer was eight. Episcopalians in Poland are a very exclusive club.
This past weekend, on a visit to Warsaw, I met a Presbyterian minister who had met Bob many years ago and had even gone with him once to the Episcopal Church, which was, in fact, a Catholic Church except for a couple of hours each week. Small world isn’t it? God works in mysterious ways; there I was in Warsaw in the tiniest church I have ever been in — perched above a photocopying centre and next to an illegal fruit machine (slot machine to Americans) arcade in a fairly forlorn district of Warsaw — with a friend who is a Presbyterian, attending the first church service I have attended since Tishabov4, and it turns out the man ministering to the tiny flock (9 people) knew my good friend, Bob Gamble. How does this happen? Poland is a country of nearly 40 million people, 71% of whom in the 2021 census considered themselves Roman Catholic.
Poland’s religious demographics have been changing fast. I would like to think I had some part in it, but I haven’t. The damage done to Poland’s Catholic culture has been done entirely by Poles, most often by priests, beginning with the former Archbishop of Poznań, Julius Paetz, a powerful man with a taste for powerless seminarians. Sexual misconduct, child abuse, the usual sordid stuff, nothing very original. In 2011, the percentage of the population regarding itself as Catholic was still 88%. In 2001 it had been well over 90%, by some estimates as high as 97%, though the numbers depend greatly on which sources you trust. When I remarked on Bob Gamble and the Presbyterian pastor having met each other, my friend pointed out that there are not many Protestants in Poland; a lot of them know each other even when they are from competing sects. Safety in numbers.
The tiny Presbyterian church, no bigger than 60 square meters including a small kitchenette and a toilet, oddly enough had some things in common with the only unlicensed bar (speakeasy) I’ve ever been in. No sign on the door, no outward indication of what was happening inside, and you had to be buzzed in. The church was up a flight of stairs; the speakeasy had been down a flight of stairs; neither was conspicuous to passers-by. To get into the speakeasy one had to know the password; I don’t think there was a password for the church. But there might have been; it’s Poland, where Protestantism is still a little outré and often a bit clandestine. During the Second World War Poland had the largest and most sophisticated resistance movement (known as “The Secret State”) of any country the Germans occupied (the French may disagree, but, as so often about so many things, they are wrong). Those skills have not left the Poles; they do clandestine very well. After 125 years of partition, six years of Nazi occupation, 45 years of Soviet hegemony, and eight years of PiS, it’s not surprising. Practice makes perfect.
When my marriage started to collapse, my wife made it very difficult for me to see my children. This phenomenon is not uncommon. By generously giving his time to act as intermediary and chaperone, Robert several times made it possible for me to spend time with Chris and Meggie without at the same time slicing Ola from stem to stern, which I often wanted to do. (I mentioned anger above, didn’t I? Remember, thinking is not doing — it’s just thinking — which is still legal in many places, though the number seems to be shrinking.) In this role Robert always wore his clerical collar. It was, he thought, something pastoral, and he wanted to look the part. I suppose it was as he thought it, but for me it was just Robert being Robert. Being Robert took many forms; he was protean.
It took time to discover how protean. He had, for instance, helped to launch Alcoholics Anonymous in Poland in the mid-80s. He was not an alcoholic himself, and strictly speaking Alcoholics Anonymous does not accept outside sponsorship, even when it might sometimes need it, as it apparently did to get started in Poland. Each chapter (meeting) is meant to be self-sufficient. Somehow that didn’t stop Robert; when he recognised a need, he tended quietly to go about addressing it. (My wife’s father once called Alcoholics Anonymous “stupid.” But AA is still around, growing, and saving lives and families, and my wife’s father is long dead and never saved a thing. QED.) In the early 90s, Robert launched the first talk radio station in Poland, Radio Obywatelskie (Civic Radio). Talk radio wasn’t divisive in those days. Robert’s whole schtick throughout the years I knew him (and I imagine throughout his life), was about bringing people together, not dividing them. For example, each Christmas he conducted a Wigilia service for the poor and lonely of Poznań in an area of Poznań called Rondo Kaponiera, a matrix of pedestrian viaducts where the homeless tended to congregate in winter, people who might otherwise not have had a Wigilia service or known that anyone cared about them. Wigilia, a celebration of the night before Christmas, a vigil for the arrival of Jesus, is the Polish equivalent of what Thanksgiving and Christmas and Rosh Hashanah and Kwanza and a lot else are to Americans. It is the ultimate you-had-better-be-home occasion of the year — which means it is also the saddest day of the year for those without a home or caring family. That was just one of many needs that Bob tried to address. For many years he also held a Thanksgiving feast at a restaurant in northern Poznań and invited all the Protestants he knew in town, many of whom were displaced Americans, for whom, as I have previously remarked, Thanksgiving is a very special day. I was often invited; there were generally more than fifty or sixty people there, including bevvies of children, for it seems that Evangelical families like having lots of children when it can be arranged.
In 1992 Robert discovered the American book, How to Talk so Kids Will Listen, and How to Listen so Kids Will Talk, and decided to bring it to Poland and create a Polish translation. Typical for Robert, he wanted only to help Polish families, parents, and children. He enrolled his friend Bronek Kledzik, a Polish editor, to help him, and together they published the book, thinking it would be a one-off. It was not. They kept finding helpful, useful, and sometimes quirky books to publish — mostly Polish translations of American and English books. Together Robert and Bronek founded the publishing firm Media Rodzina, which means Family Media. Growing from the publication of that one book, it has been a remarkable success, now publishing fiction, self-help, books on addiction and recovery, children’s books, books for teenagers, poetry, and biographies and autobiographies of people that Robert and Bronek considered to be exemplary, including books by Barack Obama and Joe Biden before either of them became President of the United States. A game-changing event in the history of Media Rodzina was Robert’s decision to bid for the Polish publication rights for the Harry Potter collection. I think quite to Robert’s surprise Media Rodzina was awarded the contract. JK Rowling lived in Scotland; perhaps she was impressed by Robert’s kilt. In any case, the Harry Potter books have been a huge and lasting success in Poland, enabling the firm to undertake many more projects than would have otherwise been possible. Now Robert is dead, and Bronek has retired, but the firm lives on, continuing in its mission to publish useful, inspiring, and entertaining books for Polish families.
I haven’t mentioned until now that Robert was a great-grandson of James Gamble, who together with William Proctor, to whom he was related by marriage, founded the consumer products giant Proctor & Gamble in Cincinnati, Ohio (USA), in 1837. Such was Robert’s self-effacing nature that he never mentioned it, and when people made the connection, he was very quick to note that it was a long time ago and far away.
Robert’s funeral was at the Miłostowo cemetery to the east of central Poznań, late in November 2020. It was a cold, damp, late autumn day. I remember taking a tram from where I lived in central Poznań. A few other people were riding the same tram out to the cemetery. I asked one of them if they were going to Robert’s funeral, and they were; we walked together from the tram stop to the cemetery. The funeral service was held outside in the open air because COVID was raging and indoor meetings were either forbidden or strongly discouraged, I forget which. The service itself was pretty banal, the usual sort of thing; it is hard to be original about death. What happened immediately after was a surprise. The Polish government had sent an honour guard of several uniformed soldiers, who fired a rifle salute, I forget of how many guns. As I recall, there was also a small military band that played the appropriate music for such occasions. Only later did I learn that Robert, among his many honours and commendations, had received the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland, a very high honour that was, I presume, the reason for the honour guard at his funeral. He was a remarkable man. I frequently feel his absence.
Here is a photo of Czas Doniewski’s memorial, which I include because I find the poem that forms a part of it both interesting and uplifting — I believe it is as applicable to Robert as it is to Czas, and I feel the two of them would have been good friends had they ever met:
The poem is called “Immortality.” It was first published in 1934, in an obscure poetry magazine (is there any poetry magazine that is not obscure?) based in the American state of Kansas. It was written by a young woman journalist named Clare Harner (1909-1977), at the time a reporter for a small-town Kansas newspaper. Nothing else Clare Harner ever wrote gained such wide popularity, but its popularity was slow in coming. At first the poem figured mostly in eulogies and memorial services in Kansas, then spread to nearby Missouri. From there it appears to have spread around the world. It has been set to music many times. How, I wonder, did it find its way onto the memorial plaque of a Polish emigre in England? I will never know, and it doesn’t matter. Just one of those things.
Kielce is an ancient city (over 900 years old), situated in the Holy Cross Mountains in the northern part of the Polish province (called a Voivodship) of Lesser Poland. It has been a centre for mining and is known in Poland as the home of Kielecki Mayonnaise, the first commercially produced mayonnaise in Poland (much loved by Poles). It is, I have read, a handsome city and it seems so from the photographs I’ve seen. Its population is just shy of 200,000, which makes it about one-third the size of Poznań. It figures prominently in Jan T. Gross’ book Fear: Anti-Semitism in Poland After Auschwitz. Kielce was the site of a post-war anti-Jewish pogrom known as the Kielce Massacre or Kielce Pogrom, in which 42 Jewish refugees hoping to reclaim their homes after the war were murdered by Polish policemen, other civil servants, and townspeople. Nine of the attackers were eventually sentenced to death by Polish courts for their part in the massacre. Gross, now an emeritus professor at Princeton University in the USA, whose mother was Christian and father Jewish (meaning that he is not a Jew himself), so upset Poland’s view of itself as a peaceful, welcoming nation of tolerance and fellow feeling, with his books Fear, Neighbours, and Golden Harvest, that he was charged with libel for insulting the reputation of Poland. He was eventually acquitted. The PiS government, heavily invested in grievance and identity politics, tried to rescind an honour that a previous Polish government had bestowed upon him — the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland, the same honour that had been awarded to Robert Gamble — but in the end it was not rescinded.
I say this now admiringly. It was not always so. Mrs Kobus is one of the main reasons I don’t know Polish. I realised that if I could understand and speak Polish I would be in constant arguments with nearly everyone around me. What’s the value in that? I prefer to filter things through the calming influence of Google Translate — it slows things down a bit and prevents me from saying things I might regret. I belong to an organisation one of whose guiding tenets is: “Never fight battles with weaker opponents.” I can state without fear of contradiction that, at least in my battles with Mrs Kobus, she always proved to be the stronger of us. (Sometimes, looking back on our differences of opinion, I think I am lucky to be alive.)
Episcopalians have a reputation to uphold; it was probably once more deserved than it is today. For example, Episcopalians were once known as “the Republican Party at prayer.” Now that the Republican Party has left the reservation, I expect that a fair number of Episcopalians have decided that rationality has its benefits and have switched over to become Democrats, or at least Independents. Still, for a long time Episcopalians were known to be conservative — old-style conservative, not Trump-style conservative. Those Trump people are more inclined to be clap-happy Evangelists — not our sort of people at all. Say Hallelujah! There was also a saying, “Whenever you get three Episcopalians together, there is always a fifth.” Episcopalians had a reputation for being serious drinkers, which was certainly true of my two-martinis-before-dinner parents. If I were to have two martinis before dinner, or at any time, I would pass out.
Yiddish. From Hebrew, the same word is usually transliterated as Tish’a B’av. Used colloquially, ‘since Tishabov” means since a very long time, so long I can’t remember; and “until Tishabov” means for a long time into the future, too long to predict, or just a long time from now. “When is the Taylor Swift concert?” “Not until Tishabov.” You get the idea. In Christian parlance, we might use the phrases “since the flood” and “until the second coming” to give something of the same meaning. For a fuller explanation of Tishabov/Tish’a B’av, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tisha_B%27Av. Whether in Yiddish or Hebrew, Tishabov is a very solemn holiday in the Jewish year, which is calculated by a lunar calendar. It falls most often in August. It is remembered as the day of the year on which both the first and second temples of Jerusalem were destroyed, the first by the Babylonians, the second by the Romans. The so-called Wailing Wall in West Jerusalem, the holiest place in Judaism, is the last remnant of the Second Temple. Above it on the Temple Mount stands the Al-Aqsa Mosque, the third holiest place in Islam. (It gets complicated.)