"You're still in my Heart"

A song written and performed by Lucy Tamarkin and Justine Goldberg, classmates of Owen's. Video compiled by Wendy Young, Owen's friend since birth.

The eulogy given by family friend Laura van Straaten

I've been a friend of Stephane since we met my freshman year in college. I met Alison when they began dating a couple years later and adored her immediately too. Just as I adored—in chronological order—Monster, Julian, Owen and Mammouth, when I got to know each of them …as puppies and as babies respectively.

From the get-go, I've had a special affection for Julian…dating from the moment I held him as an infant at his parents' house in Chicago…and, because I know first-hand the ups and downs of what it's like to have a little brother, most especially when Owen came into Julian's life.

When I met Owen for the first time at Gay and Malka's in Santa Fe, I thought he was a gorgeous baby. But my relationship with Owen was more of a stealthy, softly smoldering sort. Love crept up on me.

….

And a few winters ago, over New Year's, I found myself with U-Haul full of furniture and a broken heart …after a terrible break-up. Allison and Stephane invited me up here for a long weekend that January. It was bitterly cold. While I was a fraction of the mess I am now, both boys knew I was very sad…and were especially kind and attentive to me. They cuddled with me in the guest room and we all watched "Mad Hot Ballroom" together.

And all weekend they tried to cheer me up. As is fitting to the Catskills, they did so shamelessly with jokes and riddles, especially routines like of the "yo' mama's so fat/how fat is she?" variety. The WHOLE car-ride up. And, if memory serves, the WHOLE car-ride back….


But in addition to having, like his brother, a major capacity for goofiness—one of my favorite qualities, Owen took a unique interest in my love life.

His questions that weekend went beyond what Oprah or even Barbara Walters could get away with….because they were powered by the curiosity of a child, but a child with a special sense of interpersonal insight. WHY wasn't there going to be a wedding after all? Was I only sad or maybe just a little bit happy too? WHEN was I going to find my husband? HOW would I meet him and what was I doing about it? And of course, most vitally, Owen wanted to assure his spot as a guest at any potential future wedding…

And later, when I'd moved on and was dating again, every time I saw them….nearly the first question out of Owen's mouth was along the lines of "do you have a new boyfriend yet?"….

I asked Owen once why he was so interested in my love life and whether he and Julian wanted to get married. Julian was age-appropriately hedging. But Owen was definitive: Marriage? Bien sûr. At 8, he was a romantic. And of course, like Julian, he'd seen a good marriage at close range: his parents', which has this catastrophic week shown itself to be more solid than ever.

….

In March of this year, I was up here with the Gersons. We all decided to take a long walk with Abbe and her son Alex one morning.

Somehow, as happens on long walks with a lot of people, we fell into a collection of duos and trios. And Owen and I ended up walking for a long time just the two of us.

Owen had passed a trying but ultimately triumphant night at one of his first sleepovers with his friends Alex and Ellison the night before. He still was a bit out of sorts.

So, as a distraction, he and I started playing a game of "which house was the ugliest?" of all the houses we passed along the way.

Now, most of you are familiar with Fantasy Baseball, Fantasy Football and the like….

My game with Owen quickly morphed into what I can only call Fantasy Architecture and Home Décor.

Because: we basically designed in our heads the most awesome house.

And nearly as awesome was HOW we designed it. Because even though it was a total and utter fantasy, wild and ridiculous and fun and over the top…Owen brought to the enterprise both a keen eye for both comfort and economy as well as a contractor's sense of negotiation.

As an example of his sense of fairness, I recall that the exterior of our fantasy house was a very hot pink…and I know enough of Owen to know that that was a very generous concession to my taste, not his.

I remember wishing afterwards that I'd written down all the amenities of our dream house. And I wish so even more fervently now of course.

Here is what I remember: ….we had out own PERMANENT, private rainbow shooting directly into the chimney.

We had a pool with water that changed color when we felt like it, just like the top of the Chrysler Building—because why should all pools be blue? There was a water slide on EVERY side of the pool. And the pool was paved with diamonds so it sparkled at night.

We had a raspberry and blueberry tree. And yes, it's true that both those fruits grow on bushes and separately. But you know what? It's more convenient if they just grow together because they taste delicious that way. And if they are on a tree, you can CLIMB that tree. And that tree grew in the huge garden on our roof.

We had a really cool dog house for Mammouth—it was made of dog food. The dry kind… of course. That way, the puppy could just eat the walls whenever he felt like it and we could just build him another house as needed. But then we realized Mammouth would prefer to sleep inside our hot pink house with us… and of course, we felt the same way.

I will not digress on the toilets, but let me just say that for a boy of 8, he had very specific ideas about ablutions and very unique ideas about privacy.

People who love each other fight sometimes, as Julian and Alison and Stephane and all the Gersons and Blocks know. That comes with the territory.

And I'll admit, Owen and I fought about the hot tub.

As I said, Owen was a romantic, so unsurprisingly he first suggested a hot tub shaped like a heart. (Clearly, Alison and Stephane did a good job keeping him from reality TV, where the heart shaped hot tub is promiscuously common…in all senses of both words.)

Owen and I settled on….appropriately enough… a hot tub shaped like a Jewish star.

What's cool about a Jewish Star is that it has six points. So, naturally, there'd be a corner with water jets for each of us: for Owen, Julian, Alison, Stephane, Mammouth (because in the fantasy, the dog actually likes the water) and, most gratefully and humbly, one for me.

Also, all six of his grandparents could fit in that hot tub at once if they wanted.

You could play video games in every room in the house.

We had a fireplace with a perpetually bubbling pot of liquid gold in it so that we could make money whenever we wanted.

Did I mention, we grew white chocolate and Frango Mints on our roof too?

And meatballs.

…

I was looking forward to seeing Owen and Julian grow up.

As I know we all are, I am more committed than ever to seeing Julian grow up and become a man.

And now, I will look forward to hanging out with Owen in that wild, fantasy of a dream house some day. I know you're all invited too.

The eulogy given by Elyssa Ackerman, good friend and parent of Owen's friend Ayden

When Alison asked me if I could say a few words about Owen, I was truly honored to be able to share some wonderful thoughts and memories about my good buddy Owen.

Owen was a beautiful boy with his freckled face and sparkly eyes. His spirit was so free and his sense of adventure and curiosity about the world so intense that he developed passions early on that some adults don’t ever develop. To say that he loved sports is an understatement. He was so excited about his recent trip to Cooperstown with Stephane to visit the baseball hall of fame, I was surprised that he came back with facts he didn’t already know. I will never forget this past year when we watched the Giants beat the packers and then clinching the Superbowl title. We all watched both games together and were jumping up and down for joy, hardly able to contain the excitement we felt for the Giants.

But Owen also loved to watch Iron Chef. He would tape the episodes to watch them at 6:30 in the morning before school. He was up on his people magazine and all of the celebrity gossip, when Alison would allow it. He also recently bought a book about Barack Obama and dabbled in his own way into the world of politics. He was such an amazing person who truly comes from amazing parents. Alison and Stephane are role models as far as I am concerned in so many ways but especially in their role as parents.

We have had the privilege of being neighbors in both New York City and Woodstock. Spending many weekends throughout the year and summers upstate together. I have witnessed firsthand Owen’s quest for adventure and in Ayden he found a true partner. Whether it was fuse ball and air hockey competitions or jumping on the trampoline, ping pong or playstation, they both tackled their pursuits with such gusto you couldn’t help but join in their fun. Owen was also incredibly creative. Stephane reminded me yesterday when this past winter Owen convinced Ayden and Lucy to make snow cones. They all organized their supplies from Owen’s kitchen and produced the most original snow cones imaginable. On the ski slopes Owen courageously followed Ayden, the speed demon, but especially looked forward to warming up with hot chocolate and cookies in the lodge.

This summer, Ayden is off at sleep away camp and Owen Ackerman stepped in as Owen’s comrade. The two played tennis, attended soccer camp, often ending up in the Gerson’s pool. If you went swimming with Owen, their was a 100% chance of being shot with his high powered water gun. It was his favorite game, next to stopping Alison from doing her laps. The most amazing thing that we witnessed about the two Owen’s was Owen Gerson’s kindness, and gentle maner with our Owen. He treated him like a little brother. Owen also loved to play with baby Jake. Lucy and Owen made the best babysitting duo.

Last weekend we visited Ayden at camp and asked her if she had been receiving our letters as we had received very little mail in return. She immediately said she had gotten a letter from Owen, with a big grin on her face. “Mom” she said, “he wrote 4 ps’s” I think he has a crush on me. I asked why she thought that and to this she responded, “because their was a heart on the letter and he erased it but I could tell it was there”.

Just before the summer, Ayden and Owen planted an Avocado seed on our property and he kept asking if I had seen any sign of growth. Owen, I have not but I promise to put one in its place in your honor. We all love you, miss your beautiful spirit and will never ever forget you!

The eulogy given by Margaret Andrews, Owen's enrichment tutor

I really got to know Owen when he was in first grade. I was nervous because he was so quiet, I wondered why he was always trying to be invisible when I did math with his class. Then I watched him work independently and I was amazed. Owen was able to manipulate numbers in ways I had rarely seen from a first grade student. When I spoke to him about it he explained his ideas, I was impressed. He stood out because he didn’t want to stand out he wanted to be just like his peers. Owen wrote a book of monster story problems with great illustrations and we published it.

For the past two years Owen and I shared at least an hour together in the middle school math room every week. It was our special time. It was usually on Friday after school when we were both tired but it was okay because Owen had energy for both of us, I was always inspired by his spirit and commitment. Owen and I investigated math ideas and challenged each other to solve puzzles and problems. Most of the time we did math but sometimes we checked out stuff that was just cool. We were fascinated and perplexed by the work of Chris Jordan. Owen knew that there was a great deal of math embedded in this art and he was drawn to the challenge of figuring out how it was done. The truth is it was an unfair relationship because I learned far more from Owen than I could ever have given. Owen was able to see patterns and the solutions to complex ideas; he was able to use the math he knew to figure out the math he had never seen before. His conjectures were usually correct and I was usually amazed at the creativity and invention he would use to get to the correct answer.


When I was offered a position to be at LREI 7 years ago, I was promised the opportunity to work with some of the most inquisitive and delightful children. As a teacher I could not turn this opportunity down. LREI kept their promise, Owen was special, he was a curious, charming and wonderful child. His eyes lit up even more when he learned something new or saw something cool but he never stopped there. He asked more questions and kept going back for more details until he was sure he understood it and could do it on his own.

Owen and I shared many things, we have freckles, we love to laugh, we enjoy playing set and 24, we both ask a lot of questions, we know that white chocolate Kit Kats are the best candy on Earth and that is why he and I have a secret hiding place in the math room where we keep our stash safe for only us, we know that math is really fun and really cool, we know that seeing new patterns that occur naturally in numbers is like magic and we both love Julian!

I am so blessed to have had the opportunity to be his teacher and his friend. Owen has left us way too soon, but not before leaving a mark on our lives. He will always be in our minds and in our hearts.

From Owen's 'Bubster' - Grandma Gay

Owen, I have many wonderful fun memories of you, and almost as many pictures. Last November we took photos together in my hotel room and you started playing with the remote. You could have a great time with any new gadget. Then you let me take your photo, posing the way you knew I wanted you to. Owen, you will always live in my heart. I love you. Your Bubby

Two photos of Owen

A beautiful tribute to Owen

Written and performed by two students from Little Red.  Click here to view the video on YouTube.

The eulogy delivered by Owen's parents

We have been blessed with two great sons: two wonderful, rich, amazing, magnetic boys. For us, it’s always been about the two boys, Julian and Owen. But one of them is gone, and now we have to say goodbye to Owen and then learn to live without his huge presence — while knowing that he remains in our hearts.

Owen had something special, an inner core, an inner richness, an ability to uncover patterns, to detect minute shifts in moods or colors, to feel things and people. All of this makes his loss even more difficult. But it also makes it all the more important, for us, to capture the multiple dimensions of Owen’s presence.

Owen could be an intensely private person: playing games in his own imaginary world, reading, closing the door of his room or taking frequent trips to the bathroom. He guarded his space. But he also engaged people around him, talked, asked questions, debated, negotiated. He was such a charmer, shy at first but then so engaging with adults, especially if it was about sports. He would ask our friends pointed questions about their jobs or marriage prospects. Owen loved to be alone with people. He would be in his own world, come into yours for a while, then retreat back into his. That’s what he needed — the independence and the attachments, but on his own terms. Owen was fearless — ready to take risks and push himself to the limit. And yet he had fears: fears of sleeping away from home, of sleeping alone, of sleeping period.
Parenting Owen was the richest, most challenging and yet exhilarating job — challenging because everything had to be negotiated, justified, explained, but exhilarating because he was so smart, always a step ahead of us in the mental gymnastics. He liked to have his way but recognized the force of evidence and superior arguments. At the end of the day, we generally reached a compromise and we, his parents, had learned something in the process. Being his friend, his relative, his teacher must have been equally rich and rewarding.

Owen was in some ways a serious, intense boy— always thinking, conceptualizing, quantifying. His brain was wired with numbers and series and patterns. He memorized our credit card number a few weeks ago —it made him so proud, especially when we told him to forget it! Or, the way he went to sleep: always on his side, eyes open, looking out into emptiness, thinking. He was a ‘24’ champ and obsessed with baseball stats. In the morning, we often encountered a zombie in the hallway, who picked up the Times, sat on the couch, eyes half-open, and studied the box scores before going to the bathroom.
As serious as he was, Owen was so much fun. He loved games— board games, pool games, gin, rack-o, mental games. He would come up with jokes: “Knock, knock. Who’s there? F. F who? F you.” We'll miss playing our "to ten" game in the pool, even though Owen changed the rules constantly.
Owen was a sports nut. He was a devoted little leaguer, a great arm and a strong batter who had a deep understanding of the nuances of the games. We don’t remember him ever making a throw to the wrong base. He discovered basketball this year and my favorite sound, while working in the office, was the pounding of the ball of the pavement as he dribbled and threw shot after shot. Owen was a huge baseball fan: first the Yankees, but he was leaving them behind, for they are such losers, getting into a whole at the start of each season, barely making the playoffs, then going out in the second round. So he chose the Cubs this year (if they win the World Series, it will be special in more ways than one). Watching baseball on TV with Owen was a learning experience: he’d tell you why such a player was bunting towards first or third at a given point in the game. He watched the All-Star game until 2 AM a couple of weeks ago and even though Dan Uggla had a horrendous game, he kept him in his own fantasy team. He loved Cooperstown so much that he wanted to live there. And Playstation and Sportcenter and baseball cards were key parts of his life — always with Julian.
Owen was so lucky to have a brother like Julian, who showed him the way in the sports world, who was a true companion and a best friend. Owen admired Julian more than anyone — that’s why he always did what Julian did, sometimes to Julian’s annoyance. There was only one person who could make Owen do what he did not want to, and it was Julian. Julian will miss Owen’s presence but we know that his friends will be there to help him and take a little bit of Owen’s place.

Owen was prickly and cuddly at same time. He was a big complainer — and could be stubborn and bossy — a family trait he inherited from both sides. We once watched him play touch football on Houston ballfield. He had to be the quarterback — and he always was. He had a very good arm, but even more determination.
But he was the softest child: so sweet with little kids, whom he would take by the hand to our basement to play games. He loved to hold hands and always insisted on doing so while hiking. He loved to kiss and cuddle and hated, hated sleeping alone. We were bracing ourselves for tough teenage years and a succession of girlfriends. The girls he liked to play with, like Lucy and Ayden and Alice, were strong, spirited, and so sweet inside

Owen was so aware of the world around him and of himself. He had an amazing sense of smell, he could always guess what we had just eaten, even when he was 2 years old, and noticed that his mom always wore the same shirt when she traveled, even when she didn’t know it herself. He was tough and yet fragile — and he knew that all so well. One day, he threw a fit on the tennis court, for no good reason, and stormed off. Having caught up with him twenty minutes later, we told him that he’d been wrong. Didn’t he know it? Yes, he answered, but there is no way he could have admitted it. “I seem tough on the outside,” he said, “but I’m fragile inside.”
Because he grasped his frailties and because he was so determined, Owen always worked at making himself a better person. He had an issue with sleep-overs far from home and he was working on it, he wanted so much to get over it, he was making progress, but he knew it would take time. It was one of our summer goals. He did not reach it, but there were so many small victories this summer — a summer during which he matured so much:
—Owen attended a new day camp and was contemplating the idea of going to sleep-away next year.
—He biked all the way to the soccer field, but along the creek, not 212, which was too dangerous. And our 10-mile bike trip in Park City last week. It was hard, and his dad had miscalculated the headwind on the return leg. We rationed water, and when it got really tough, we talked about Descartes and dividing difficult tasks into smaller parcels. Owen and Julian liked the idea and both made it. It was a glorious achievement.
—Treading lightly — with his body and his person. Not stepping on toes — figurative and symbolic.
—Ordering a salad rather than steak as an entrée
—Making sacrifices and thinking of others. When his dad told bad jokes, he would laugh boisterously then say “Look Papa, I am making a sacrifice.”

At this time, we could be angry about what happened to Owen in Utah, the circumstances of the accident, the negligence that may have been involved, or the fatality. We will no doubt feel anger, but not today, and, we hope it will not be our dominant emotion either. We are shattered by the loss — present and especially future, for Owen would have become a remarkable man, father, and citizen of the world. Owen always had ideas and plans for things he wanted. We are so sorry that he won’t grow up and reach his full potential. He would have made a difference in the world — as he already had at home and at school.
Owen lived his life to the fullest. He embraced it. On the river the day he died, he shrieked with glee when the rapids became faster. After one of them, he turned to me and said “This is the best day of my life.”
Both of us have always been aware of the fragility of Owen’s presence among us. We just felt it, independently, in ways that escape rational explanation. When he was alive, we treasured every moment with him because we sensed, somewhere, that they might not be eternal. Now, we treasure the memories of Owen and the knowledge that his life was short, but rich, that it reached out to others around him and made us all better, smarter, more self-aware, and happier. Owen looked into himself and into the outside world with penetration and feeling. He sought understanding while remaining aware of his own frailty and limitations. He embraced the beauty and efflorescence of life while understanding its darker, impenetrable side. If Owen has left us a legacy, then this is it.

The Owen Gerson Memorial Fund

A fund honoring Owen has been set up at The Jewish Communal Fund. Interested friends can visit www.JewishCommunalFund.org to donate.

Funeral Information and Directions

A funeral will be held at the Woodstock Jewish Congregation 0n Thursday, July 31 at 3 pm with burial immediately following.  The attendance of children is up to each parent's discretion.  Anyone who wants to be there to honor and remember Owen is welcome.  There will be childcare available either at the synagogue or nearby, please contact Andrea if you're interested at (212) 242-6152 or mossmag@aol.com

For details and directions see first comment in comments section.

Remembrances of Owen

Owen Gerson passed away on Sunday, July 27, on a rafting trip with his family on the Green River in Utah.  

He was such a great kid and such a great spirit and everyone who knows him mourns his passing and sends their love and support to his family.  

Please click on the 'comments' link below to post any recollections of this beautiful boy.