newjerseynewsroom.com

BY SUSIE WILSON

NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM

SEX MATTERS

In November 2009, I wrote "An open letter to Democratic New Jersey Congressman John Adler on the health care reform bill”. Last week, I attended his funeral with about 1,000 others at Temple Emanuel synagogue in Cherry Hill.

The former U.S. representative from South Jersey was a mere 51 years old, the age of one of my children. This fills me with sadness. Thirty years separated us, and I thought that John—who lost his battle for re-election after a 20-plus year career in public service and was now a partner of a large law firm—had miles to go and many mountains to climb in his new life before he slept.

The service was as large as any I’ve ever attended, surpassed perhaps only by the funerals of President John F. Kennedy in Washington in 1963 and Senator Robert F. Kennedy in New York City in 1968. Like John Adler, both were struck down with great suddenness in the prime of their lives. At the Kennedy funerals, I was young, wore black, and had red eyes from weeping. Most of the mourners at the Adler funeral were young and wore black, and many eyes were red from weeping.

“Why?” Rabbi Jerome David asked the huge crowd.

Most knew the few facts that were available in the press: John had died from heart disease. He contracted endocarditis, an infection of the inner lining of the heart, and underwent emergency surgery in March. His father had died of a series of heart attacks at 47, leaving 16-year-old John and his mother to run the family dry cleaning business. The initial news after the surgery was good, and we who cared about John breathed easier. Then came the sudden announcement that he had died.

The rabbi concluded that we would never know all the answers to his question, which was fraught with many layers of meaning, and had to accept the fact of his death in our hearts.

It was John’s wife, Shelley, who bravely re-introduced the subject of John’s heart when she rose to speak. Flanked by the their four handsome sons—ranging in age from a college senior to the youngest, whom I guessed may have been nine or ten—she told a series of stories about how her and John’s hearts were entwined.

“To my darling John, it all comes down to heart. I lost you today, and my heart is broken,” she said as she faced the audience. She told us how her heart “fluttered” the first time she saw John in the Harvard law library when they were both students at Harvard Law School. Her heart “fluttered again” when, as a newly married lawyer on her first day at her law firm job, an assistant handed her a note saying that “your husband called.” She concluded saying, “While your heart rests, ours will do your work. We shall carry you and love you in our hearts.”

The speakers who followed Shelley often mentioned the same words about her husband: “brilliant,” “authentic,” and “honorable.” They stressed John’s love of family. Several called him “a mensch,” a highly complimentary Yiddish word that goes beyond being “a good person.” Rather, it means “someone to admire and emulate, someone of noble character [link to: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mensch].”

None of the speakers mentioned any political issues in which John had been embroiled during his first term in Congress. I knew that he had voted against the health care reform bill, because he told me, and when I asked him his reasons, he cited his concern with the lack of cost-containment features in the bill.

John told me that he had a one-on-one talk with President Obama about his position on the health care reform bill, but he had not wavered in the face of the president’s arguments. He did represent a traditionally Republican district, and I think his views might have been influenced by the fact that he faced a tough opponent with a lot of money in the upcoming election. In the end, he lost the 2010 election by two percentage points.

In a conservative district, John showed heart on abortion, family planning, and sex education issues. He unwaveringly upheld a women’s right to choose. During the debate about health care reform, he voted against the Stupak-Pitts amendment, the repressive, anti-choice amendment that passed the House of Representatives and was included in its version of the Health Care Reform Bill. (It was not included in the final version that passed the Senate.)

Had John been re-elected in November, I’m sure he would have supported federal funding for Planned Parenthood clinics across the nation, perhaps pointing out that they do their best to lower the number of unplanned pregnancy and abortions by providing contraceptive counseling and access to low-cost prevention methods to teens and adult women. I always thought of John as a feminist.

In my 2009 “open letter” to John, I wrote about a memory of him that came to mind once again as I listened to the two rabbis, friends, and family who eulogized him.

"I was sitting in the balcony of the Senate chamber in the State House [in January, 1994]. The topic on the floor was the vote to override the veto of the Stress-Abstinence Bill by lame-duck Governor Jim Florio. This bill would have required all school districts to stress-abstinence-only and did not include any provision to discuss other contraception methods during family life and sex education classes. . . . Those who kept scorecards of these dramatic legislative moments had listed you as a solid vote against the attempt to override the veto. But many legislators vote the right way without ever rising to their feet to go on record about why they cast their vote. This takes a little more courage, and on this particular evening, not many Senators were brave enough to do so. You decided to speak. . .

What made your decision especially memorable to me was that you had one of your young sons sitting next to you at your desk on the floor. . . You spoke eloquently about the promise and purpose of government in a democracy to enlarge people’s rights and liberties rather than restrict them.

I sat in the balcony and thought: ‘Isn’t it wonderful that John’s son is listening to his father speak so eloquently about the role of freedom in a democracy? What a lifelong lesson this little boy is getting about the need to always try to thoughtfully expand freedom.’”

One of the rabbis said that when you approached the Adler home in Cherry Hill, you saw an American flag and a basketball hoop. The flag represented country and the court stood for family, he said. I believe that behind that flag and basketball hoop was John’s courageous and loving heart.

At the end of his remarks, during which he choked up many times, John’s brother-in-law, Steve, said that in Hollywood, where he lives, the highest compliment is to give someone a standing ovation. He asked the audience to rise for John.

The sounds of that deserving applause will reverberate in my heart.

Susie Wilson, former executive coordinator of the Network for Family Life Education at Rutgers University's Center for Applied and Professional Psychology (now renamed Answer), is a national leader in the fight for effective sexuality and HIV/AIDS education and for prevention of adolescent pregnancy. She can be reached at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

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