Myles - by Don Silverstein

I am Don Silverstein, Myles’ father-in-law, and by default Marcie’s father

When Marcie graduated from Emory, she stayed in Atlanta and went to work for Deloitte, a big 8 accounting firm.  About two years into the job, Deloitte merged with Touche, to become Deloitte & Touche.  Marcie was excited about the merger, because she had fun going out for drinks with “a great bunch of guys that worked for Touche” — well, all but one of the guys were great, he was a jerk.  Guess who that one was?

Marcie, what were you thinking?

But, not too much later, “great bunch of guys” shrunk down to Myles and Stuart, who lived together at the time.  Things slowly evolved again, this time to Myles and Marcie — big time.  First, they bought a house together, and then they got married — in that order.

Over 20 years ago, I accepted “early retirement” from my job, which is another way of saying that I was suddenly unemployed.  A couple of months later, we got a call from Myles on a Saturday night , to let us know that he was about to propose to Marcie — that night.  My response to Myles was “I’ve never had someone ask me this question.”  Obviously, Marcie was more prepared for her question than I was for mine!  Even if I had trouble answering the question, it was a big step in my seeing how great a person Myles was, and has continued to be for the 20-some years that I’ve been lucky enough to be his relative.

After my head cleared, my thoughts became, “for the first time in my adult life, I’m unemployed, and my daughter says she is getting married in a year.”  As the kids would text or post on Facebook today — OMG.

What followed, as we all know, was a wonderful marriage for over 20 years, when many marriages don’t last for two, and three fantastic kids.  As Myles would frequently point out, “That does not mean that I have many more kids and only three are fantastic — there are only three.”

Marcie, it’s really fortunate that you overlooked whatever initially excluded Myles from the “great bunch of guys”, and all of the amazing experiences that came as a result.

Adam, Ali, and Josh, you are all fantastic, and if you’re ever not sure, you can always ask me, Mimi, or Pop Pop.  And we all know that one of the reasons you’re all so fantastic is the fantastic father, and fantastic person, who raised you.