Fond farewell to a late-blooming contributor

By Porus P. Cooper

A familiar byline will not be appearing again on this page, I am sorry to note.

Sidney B. Kurtz, 81, died a few days ago. He was ailing in recent months and perhaps it was sadly prescient of him that his last article published here told of a hospital stay.

The effort typified his writerly instincts. Even the confines of a hospital bed couldn't suppress them.

So it's hard to believe he had suppressed those instincts for nearly a lifetime. He plunged into writing as a serious avocation only when he hit his 70s.

Stricken with polio as a youngster, he had heeded his mother's advice to learn a trade to support himself. He spent his working life as a watchmaker. (Is that how he got an eye for the fine detail?) For years, he also battled Crohn's disease.

As a retiree, he seemed to be in a hurry to make up for time lost. From his Pennsauken apartment, he wrote and wrote. Four books and countless articles, many for this page.

No topic, it seemed, was too big or too little for his restless curiosity: The story of an Austrian Jewish family who fled the Nazis only to find tenuous protection in Japanese-occupied China, a tale of race relations, skiing in South Jersey, a parrot store on Route 70, baby-sitting an infant grandson, the high cost of hearing aids, and the thinking of his "think tank" of fellow retirees - who met regularly at his beloved Jewish Community Center in Cherry Hill, where he in turn was beloved.

Through all the personal adversity he endured, Sid never lost his cheerful demeanor.

But his latest and final illness, leukemia, must have been too much for even his doughty spirit to bear. Ever the professional, however, he sent me this e-mail just days before he died:

"My health is not the best these days so you may not see too much production from me in the near future... .

"Sincerely,

"Sid Kurtz"

But Sid, I suspect you were a big inspiration to other writers and I have a feeling production will not be a problem.