Henry Lewis Shapiro
Henry Lewis Shapiro, 83, of University City, Missouri, passed away on
Monday, February 21, 2022, after a prolonged period of health
problems.
Henry was born on October 17, 1938, to Sam and Esther Shapiro in
Brooklyn, New York. After high school, he went on to study at Brooklyn
College, the University of Toronto, and finally Columbia University,
with a PhD in philosophy, and a dissertation on Aristotle.
While at Columbia, he met another philosophy student, Eleanor Johnson
(now Godway), who assisted him with his PhD thesis. They married in
1963, and had their first child, Sonia Caroline, in 1965.
Henry landed a teaching job at University of California, Riverside,
and their second child, Benedict Aron Francis, was born in 1967. The
following year, he found a position at the University of Missouri-St.
Louis. His teaching of Ancient Greek philosophy and related subjects
was marked by his vast knowledge, his sense of humor, and his
attention to detail, qualities evident to all who knew him.
With great sadness for all involved, his and Eleanor’s marriage ended
in divorce after seven years, in 1971, and his children moved with
their mother to Toronto, Canada. He was conscientiously involved with
visiting and supporting them through the years.
Besides his teaching work, and after his retirement in 1998, Henry
spent his time collecting books, learning new words, studying
languages, reading literature and the news, watching international TV,
traveling, and daily contact with his longtime sweetheart, Beverly
Johnson. He was also a great support to people he knew, on the
telephone and in other ways.
Henry was predeceased by his sister, Ellen Jablon. He is survived by
his children, his son-in-partnership Ken Gartner, his daughter-in-law
Fukiko, and two grandchildren, Taiyo and Yume, as well as Beverly, and
quite a few dear friends and relations.
His ashes will be interred at Sonia’s home in Warren, Massachusetts.
I knew Henry for a dozen years, though only from a family perspective half a continent away.
He was a grand old man and raconteur.
He was not shy about informing a store manager of grammatically challenged signage.
He especially liked to study obituaries and remained remarkably well-informed about meaningful current events.
He knew the value of a dollar, having been minted during the Great Depression, himself.
Henry could infuse such a wide variety of meanings into one of his sighs that it was nothing short of an art form.
He will remain in our hearts. And many of us will continue to proofread our expositions twice for errors, as our family grammarian so often highlighted these, for our benefit.
The world is a little less rich, a little less orderly, a little less ironic, and a little less grammatically correct without Henry.
Rest in peace, Henry. I am going to miss your lively participation in the Saint Louis Area Group Reading Ancient Philosophy (SLAGRAP).
Our hour plus telephone conversations improved my grammar and enriched my family memories. I remember still the books you bought me for my sixteenth birthday. I will miss your caring, probing questions and your Poretsky puns. Peace.
Cousin Marjory
I am so glad to get these echoes of my father. Even if you come across this obituary months or years after his death please leave something about how you knew him (or even complaints. I miss being fed up with him as well as his charm).
I met Henry at the University of Missouri- St Louis where my husband, Jim, taught philosophy with him and where I also taught in the Art Department. We all became fast friends quickly – so much so that he felt completely at home inviting himself over for dinner periodically. After we moved to California, Henry dutifully watched over my use of both the English AND Yiddish languages. His great sense of humor riddled our email exchanges and he kindly sent me his Word of the Day just to make sure I stayed abreast of current English usage. His phone calls – erratic as they were – always made my day. We will miss him.
RIP Henry, the smartest guy i knew. No more cigars.
We taught together at UMSL for over 10 years. I have to say, working with Henry was one of the best parts of the job. For much of that time he he lived just around the corner, and I would walk over for advice and conversation several times a week. He was always, in his inimitable way, brilliant, funny, and–when needed–sympathetic.
I left UMSL to join the Foreign Service in 1989, but we kept in touch as best we could as I moved around the world. Whenever I was posted in Washington, we telephoned frequently, so I could get my dose of erudite quips and puns on a more regular basis. After we had both retired, we kept it up.
Henry was one of the most exceptional people I have ever known, and I always treasured our friendship. The world is a less interesting and humane place without him in it, and I will miss him very much indeed.
Henry discovered our tiny used-book shop located near him when he spent a summer in Montreal. Because he handled and examined books with such care and intensity, we asked whether he was a book dealer. He introduced himself and we became good friends — talking, eating
(he loved the food in Montreal) and laughing together. He shall remain a vivid presence in our lives.
We taught together at UMSL for over 10 years. I have to say, working with Henry was one of the best parts of the job. For much of that time he he lived just around the corner, and I would walk over for advice and conversation several times a week. He was always, in his inimitable way, brilliant, funny, and–when needed–sympathetic.
I left UMSL to join the Foreign Service in 1989, but we kept in touch as best we could as I moved around the world. Whenever I was posted in Washington, we telephoned frequently, so I could get my dose of erudite quips and puns on a more regular basis. After we had both retired, we kept it up.
Henry was one of the most exceptional people I have ever known, and I always treasured our friendship. The world is a less interesting and humane place without him in it, and I will miss him very much indeed.
I share your sorrow at his loss, but am grateful for the many good memories he has left behind.
Rest in peace Henry. He will surely be missed. I enjoyed emailing with him over the last couple of years and I will truly miss that. We had a zoom meeting with some family members to reminisce.
I was fortunate enough to meet Henry just a few short years ago. A mutual friend introduced us so that I could help him with some computer upgrades. His brilliance, insightfulness, and eccentricity were immediately apparent. He was physically incapable of letting a setup for a joke or reference pass him by – the more dated/obscure the better.
A monstrously empathic soul, he always encouraged me to seek the good in our society – a subject about which we both had our misgivings.
Unfortunately, his agoraphobic tendencies and my own insular nature made keeping in touch a challenge. When the pandemic hit, I feared I may never see him again. Sadly, that proved to be the case. I’ll always regret not making more of an effort.
Rest well, dear sage.
My history with Henry Shapiro goes back to the late 1970s and early 80s when I took two or three philosophy courses he taught at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. He loved words and their etymologies; I especially remember his enthusiastic discourse of Greek root words pertinent to our study.
During my time at UMSL, I took a seminar-type class with one of Henry’s colleagues. This class met in a small room with a long table we gathered around. There was also a couch. When we entered the room each week, there was always the distinct possibility that we would rouse Henry from a snooze he was taking between classes. He seemed a bit indignant that we would interfere with his use of the room!
After my husband and I moved to University City, we would sometimes see Henry while we were out on a walk. He was happy to talk at length. When I started to work at the University City Public Library five years ago, I began to see Henry more often. Henry was well-known by most of the library staff. He and I shared email addresses in 2018 and kept up a semi-regular correspondence. He would forward emails from “A Word A Day,” as well as articles from the New York Times and other publications.
I enjoyed learning about Henry the man, but in email he was often a man of few words. However, he knew how to great mileage out of just those few words. In time, I gathered the following from our correspondence: He was born in Brooklyn and his heart was still there. He once sent me a Zillow photo of a house his family used to live in on Thomas S. Boylan Street in Brooklyn. He said he never ever owned any real estate. He reminded me of that fact on more than one occasion when I was lamenting the need for home repairs!
One of our more poignant exchanges was on Mother’s Day one year, when I asked him for recollections of his mother. His response was among the longest I received from him: “For years, at the end, she had no idea who I was. That was hard to take. I remember thinking that she never did know who I was. All the same, she was a loving parent. And I miss her.”
In December of 2020, the subject line of an email from him was “Hospital.” The body of the email consisted of two sentences. The first one: “Going to [hospital] tomorrow for a few (?) days.” The second one: “Oh my oh my.”
I offer my deepest condolences to his daughter, Sonia, his son, Ben, and to Beverly, as well as to the rest of us who will miss him greatly.
Sonia, I ran across Henry’s obit by accident while I was looking up one for someone else. I am adhering to your request to write something about your father. He was my colleague at UMSL (I was in English). We also dated for a period and I met you when you stayed with him for a while on Amherst Avenue in U. City. I inherited your cat Nika, who was my dear companion until 1992. Henry was a profound influence in my life and I loved him dearly while our relationship lasted. I hope you are doing well.
Henry was my mother Ellen’s older brother. If you see pictures of them as children they seem close and loving, but when I was growing up Henry lived far from us, we rarely saw him, and I got the impression from my mother that they weren’t close. My one clear-ish memory of him is about books. We went to Walden Books at the Staten Island Mall and I was allowed to pick out any book I wanted. I don’t remember what book it was, but he also bought me Anne of Green Gables which I ended up treasuring. My mother became quite unwell when she was older, and Henry became a much more frequent caller. I believe he phoned her daily and they had a little game where she’d make up rhymes for him during each call. I really appreciated that, and he and I had several long phone calls shortly after she died. I feel now that I should have been in touch more, at least by email. I’m enjoying hearing these reminiscences and different perspectives and I was glad to be part of a Zoom call and then email chain with relatives sharing memories. Warmest condolences to Sonia, Ben, and Beverly and their families.
I am Beverly’s daughter, Perryn.
My Henry memories in no particular order:
Our nicknames for each other – Hendogs and Pipdogs.
I have so much gratitude to all he did for my mom and came to appreciate their love for each other (harder to see that when I was 16, but now at 53, I have long seen it).
Getting my grammar corrected since the age of 16. How he got repeatedly frustrated with me for every mistake that I made. But I got used to it and I understood how important it was to him. He and I could even laugh about it! Sometimes.
Henry encouraging me to go to McGill university and showing me bits of Montreal that he loved.
He and mom introducing me to Mai Lee vietnamese restaurant back when it was brand new and entrees cost $3 – I went last week on my visit to St. Louis and it’s now $20+.
Thanksgiving dinners with an assortment of people and Henry wandering around amongst the guests and having a “lie down” back in Mom’s bedroom to rest – when all of us were a bit too much for him.
Holding his hand last fall and how frail it was.
He and I actually finally saying I love you last summer.
How infuriating he could be! And how we always made up after an argument.
I am certainly not an intellectual, but we had lots of fun and laughs and I got to see his silly side. He would tell me three-year-old jokes because that’s all I understood in his opinion. 🙂
How crazy it is that I never met his children in those 37 years he was in my life, but I have enjoyed getting to know Ben and Ken in person on our visits last week and other family by phone in recent months.
Thankful for Henry’s friends Carla and Aleta, who became his caregivers and in-person touchstones in the last years. So very grateful for all that they did for Henry when family could not be there.
I love you, Hen. And I miss you.
Pippi
Henry was my lovely uncle and, as my son Anton immediately responded when I told him Henry had died, my “best telephone buddy”. He was my confident. I told him all my boy and girl troubles and always had a sympathetic ear. He was the last of my relatives of his generation to take a real interest in my doings, especially as a simultaneous interpreter and I will miss that so much. He was very much there for me by phone when I was nursing my mother for five months in her home, mostly on my own, until she died there and indeed was the last person besides me to hear her the night she died, staying with me on the phone for an hour and a half though I know it cost him dearly to do that, squeamish as he was about illness and dying. My mother was close to him as well and had regular long phone calls with him. So although they “both divorced from the same family”, they remained relatives all the same. I started learning Yiddish for him, for the plesure of having him correct me in that language as well as in all the others we shared: German, Italian, French. I regularly wrote to him in German and in Italian and though I speak both fluently and he didn’t ever speak them to me, his grammar was always better. I remember once assuming he spoke Russian and kept chatting away to him in Russian not realising he couldn’t because he always answered in English anyway and it took me ages to believe that he really didn’t understand a word. I loved talking of places I’d been and of Berlin where I live and having him know the galleries and main sights or books about the places. I loved him period. I loved his stability, his predictable responses (after my unpredictable upbringing) and his kindness to me whenever I was in trouble. I feel so sad at the loss of this lovely male relative of that generation who was always safe and loving and kind. And who shared so many interests with me. I am still finishing the Anthony Trollope Barchester Chronicles for his sake, as he, in return, read the large font Forsyte Saga books I sent him. I’m so so sad to have lost him. I love you, Henry.
*he always had
*pleasure
(You just know how he hated a typo).
In the summer of 1958, after my sophomore year at Brooklyn College, I audited a class there in beginning German. On the first day, the professor asked me and the other auditor, a serious-looking fellow wearing a brown suit, to sit together since we were not officially registered for the course. That fellow was Henry, and that is how we met.
Henry had spent one year at Brooklyn College, then transferred to the University of Toronto. After graduating from Brooklyn College, I went to the University of Illinois for my M.A. We saw each other when he and I returned to Brooklyn for vacations. He met my parents, and I met his mother (possibly also his father, I don’t remember) and his sister Ellen in their house on Hopkinson Avenue. From August 1962 until August 1963, I went to England, Spain, France and Germany. Henry and I continued to correspond. While in Madrid, I received a letter from him telling me that he was going to marry Eleanor. After that, we lost touch.
I enrolled in a Ph.D. program at Rutgers, ultimately married and had two children. I reconnected with Henry in Toronto for a few days at the end of 1981 (or was it 1984?). More years went by. In 1993, a literature conference at Washington University in which I presented a paper brought us together again for what was to be the last time we saw each other. He took me to a fabulous Vietnamese restaurant; must have been the one you remember, Perryn.
Since 1993, Henry and I kept in touch by phone and by email. He had an intense interest not only in languages, as others have observed, but also in anything related to the Brooklyn of the 1950’s and 1960’s that we had both experienced. He and I sent each other obscure words, articles, old photos of Brooklyn and more. When I felt sad or frustrated, I called him because I knew he could always make me laugh. I also turned to him for ethical and logical advice. He never disappointed. Now that he’s gone, I’ll have to go it alone. It’s not going to be easy after more than 60 years.
I was very sad to read of Henry’s passing. Though I knew he had a rough last couple of years health-wise it still comes as a shock when you hear that news. What a guy!
I knew him as a student at UMSL. Though I majored in American history I took a couple of his philosophy classes because I was interested.
The first class was titled Philosophy and Sex. That first evening we all eagerly awaited the prof. In walks Henry. A bit disheveled, very hairy. He had me at his first sentence. He introduced himself and then finished with “…I give A’s for sex.” As he started to get into the course it was very evident that he had great enthusiam for both subjects in the title. Whenever class would bog down and get slow we just told dirty jokes. Different time people. Nobody tells jokes anymore. It was great fun learning from Henry.
After graduating I went to grad school and after that I moved to Seattle in 1986. So I missed him for a few years but then I got to know him better as a friend through my good friend Tony W. who had become a friend of his. So when I visited StL the three of us got together and went to bookstores, the U City library or Blueberry Hill. I always enjoyed seeing him. A real baseball fan (as I am) he was still mad after 50 years that the Dodgers left Brooklyn. He loved quips, puns, jokes, language, wordplay. He loved words. I remember telling him on the phone that I had just finished a book by Anthony Trollope. Henry told me he had just read 12,000 pages of Trollope. 12,000!
Very sad to hear of his passing but I am very happy that he was part of my life.
From Harvey Shepherd, Montreal, March 25
I met Henry in my first undergraduate years at the University of Toronto; where I arrived in 1957, a year behind him. We were in the same men’s (as it was then) residence for a year or two and I soon came to respect his devotion to philosophy and bibliomania and to enjoy his wry sense of humour. He also commented on the similarities in our initials, HLS, and dates of birth without either of us attaching occult significance to this. (I was born on September 7, 1939, and christened Harvey Lawrence Shepherd.) We became good enough friends to exchange joint visits, one each, to our recent parental homes.
He pointed out with a certain glee that his was not far from Amboy Street in Brooklyn, then known from the title of the fictionalized best-seller about a teenage gang, The Amboy Dukes. He also took me to a performance of Brecht’s Threepenny Opera. My parents lived in Burlington, Ontario, a comparatively boring exurb of Hamilton.
News of Henry`s death led me to some reminiscences and reflections. In 1959 or so we moved from the men’s residence into an apartment in what had once been a large private house near the campus (and has been long since demolished to make way for the expanding campus).
As I recall, five of us were involved. David Helwig was to be one of us but got married, creating a vacancy that was filled by me, Henry or “Pratt” (read on), I forget which. Henry’s and my close friendships with David were to be a leitmotif of our lives (I hope Henry would approve of my use of that word in this context) for the rest of our days. David went on to be a writer and poet of distinction and, among other things, receive an Order of Canada after a nomination effort in which Jean was active, encouraged at a distance by Henry (in St. Louis at that time.) David died in Prince Edward Island, where he had been living with his wife, the poet Judy Gaudet, in 2018 and I think Henry continued to keep in touch with Judy, so long as he could.
Anyway, Henry and I shared a three-room apartment with Eric Peter Battey Pratt (a.k.a. “Pratt”) who had served in the British army for a while, including in Cyprus, and was a few years older than us and did the cooking. He went on to a varied career in mathematics, science and teaching, married and had three daughters and with his wife remodelled a 19th-century rural limestone farmhouse in eastern Ontario. David let me know of Pratt’s death, which occurred some time after 2010.
Another good friend, David Stein, lived on the second floor of the house near the U. of T. campus. He went on to quite a career as a writer and, especially, a journalist, specializing in urban affairs in the sprawling Toronto region. I saw him at a memorial service for David Helwig in Toronto funeral, the year before David Stein’s own death in 2019.
Which leaves me with the humbling thought that of the five of us I am the last man something, an honour do not especially deserve.
Over the years since I got my BA, and through our respective peregrinations, Henry and I, later Henry and my wife Jean-and-I, were in and out of touch at various times. This was no doubt mainly my fault, since Henry was so conscientious about keeping in touch.
I want to mention as evidence of his extraordinary generosity that there were several times when he offered Jean and me, and we accepted, interest-free loans (in the low thousands, as I recall). These came in handy to help; with challenges, but we were not hard up. One of these loans, Jean recalls, was toward a computer for her desk-top-publishing business. There was a condition: each of the regular payments of principal was to be accompanied by as newsy note. (I think we were respectively in Montreal and St. Louis by then.
I think our relations tended to get a little closer again as a result of Jean’s and my final (so far as know) move to Montreal from Toronto in 1978 for reasons related to my newspaper career and David’s fairly short-lived move to Montreal from Kingston, Ontario, where he lived from 1992 to 1996, between marriages. This was an incentive for Henry to come to Montreal to visit both David and us a few times. I recall that Henry liked to take remarkably long walks through Montreal, often alone, and visit bookstores and so on. He would often stay with David but on at least one occasion we enjoyed playing host to both him and Beverly.
For some reason one anecdote about Henry comes to mind. David had a keen interest music and a good baritone voice and sang for a while in the choir of a highly traditional Anglo-Catholic (you might say high-church Episcopalian) church in Montreal. During one of Henry’s visit he accompanied us to a recital or perhaps service in the church when David was singing in the choir (none the five us was Anglican.) Standing around in the nave after the service, we were chatting with a relative of mine, an active Anglican, when we were joined by an Anglican cleric who was apparently a good friend of my cousins was introduced around as Archdeacon Peter Hxxxxx. Somehow the two Anglicans lapsed into a facetious and light-hearted argument about which of them owed the other a.lunch. After the two went their ways, Henry commented to the rest of us,
“Well, I see where they get the ‘arch’ in ‘archdeacon.’”
I am writing this especially for Sonia and Ben, who I knew way back when, and Beverly, who I met at least a couple of times. And of course for Henry, who I hear shouting from the wings, “Whom, you idiot, whom!”
It was only today that I was saddened to learn about Henry’s death, via a memorial notice in the UMSL Retiree Association newsletter. It was Henry who brought me to UMSL in 1970. I had been a friend of his in grad school at Columbia. When I was job-hunting after failing to publish enough at the University of Wisconsin, Henry invited me to interview at the newly minted St Louis campus of the University of Missouri.
Henry was definitely one of a kind. In many ways brilliant, in many ways idiosyncratic. And very Brooklyn. And oy veh! so many fond memories are stirred by Ken Gartner’s comment:
“Henry could infuse such a wide variety of meanings into one of his sighs that it was nothing short of an art form.”
Although I lost connection with Henry a few decades ago, he’s remained with me in memory, a distinctive presence, and I was deeply moved to hear of his loss.
Linda S., Oct. 22, 2022 – a few days ago, Oct. 17th, would have been Henry’s 84th birthday.
Linda S., October 20, 2023 – and again, let’s remember Henry’s birthday, October 17th. I truly miss him.