Daniel Weisz Obituary

Dear Mrs. Weisz and Family,

I was sorry to hear that your husband/father had died. I remember him as my 8th grade Sunday School teacher in Elgin. I believe he taught me 2 things--one I can't remember and that it was important to marry a Jewish girl. At least I remembered to marry the Jewish girl!

Your husband/father was generous with his time, patient with disinterested 8th grade religious school students, and passionate about Judaism.

My sincere condolences to all of you.

It seems impossible that the world can go on spinning without Danny!

Cuz Rosalie

Dear Weisz family. I am so sorry to hear about Danny. My dad, Sammy Mandell, had spoken of him often and was very fond of him and the other cousins as you know. I remember my dad saying he was being treated as royalty the last time he went back to visit all of you, and Danny had often invited him to come. Please accept my sincere condolences, Sue (Sam and Elinor Mandell's daughter)

We extend our sympathy.

Eulogy given by Rabbi Maralee Gordon



Establish the work of our hands that it may long endure. To be sure, the work of Daniel Weisz’s hands will long endure—the work of his hands and heart and mind. Daniel was brought up on hard work and it stuck with him. He was born in Muskegon, Michigan. When his father lost his job during the depression he tried sharecropping with the family on farmland near South Haven. His mother died when he was 8, and his father brought the family—Daniel, his three brothers and a sister, to Chicago. A good part of his youth Daniel lived in foster homes; it was to his relief when he was placed in a family with his older brother as well. Despite being separated so much in their youth, Daniel and Robert and Howard and Edgar and Sally and Richard remained a close-knit family to this day.

For a time Daniel lived with an aunt whose husband was a lawyer. He saw that education and hard work could lead to prosperity, and it kindled his ambition.

Dan and Lorraine met in high school, and they started going out when he was 17 and Lorraine was 15. During the war he spent two years in the service, and Lorraine wrote him a letter every single day. When the war was over and he wanted to re-up for six months of postwar work in Japan to be with his brother Howard, who had joined his regiment, Lorraine let him know that the letters would stop. He came home immediately, and his home was with Lorraine ever since. After fifty nine years he still referred to Lorraine as his bride. Mitchell swears they were the hottest couple he knew, and I know many of you will agree.

Those first married years weren’t easy. Daniel was in law school and Lorraine was at teachers’ college. They lived in a rooming house where they shared a bathroom with eight people. Lorraine was able to work part time while going to school, and during the summers they worked long hours delivering flowers to be able to support themselves for the school year.

Lorraine taught for two years after she graduated, until Laurence came along. Once Daniel finished school he began working long hours as a lawyer. As Lorraine tells it, he was such a compassionate attorney, he charged so little, that he had to have many, many clients to be able to support his family. To boot, as a divorce lawyer he undercut his business by trying to mend marriages-- with some success! He truly cared for his clients.

Maybe it was those early depression years, or the years of making do with so little early in their marriage, but Dan had a real appreciation for the usefulness of, well, just about anything. He wouldn’t buy a newspaper if he could read one someone else had discarded on the train. He wouldn’t throw out a piece of paper if it had a blank corner on it. Then there were those family road trips to Florida, when they would stop the car to collect pears and apples and oranges that had fallen off overloaded trucks. When he started his farm out here, Daniel bought trees that looked like they wouldn’t make it through another month, and in a year or two they were thriving.

Yes, he appreciated the usefulness of things, he was frugul, but he was not stingy. On the contrary, he was generous both with his time and with his money. How many times did he raid the family freezer to feed a client or a neighbor?

Dan loved the outdoors. Many of you know of his penchant for fishing in Florida or Canada. His fishing days actually go way back. Lorraine recalls how he would take Laurence in the playpen down to the Shedd Aquarium to fish for smelts off the pier. When they first acquired land in rural Woodstock, Dan got grants to dig lakes on his property. They all went swimming—and fishing.

Even before they moved out from Skokie, Stewart remembers the grapevines his father grew in the backyard. Dan was so pleased to be able to establish his father on farmland in Woodstock. Of course, Lorraine notes that between equipment held together with baling wire and her father-in-law’s ability to put in whatever crop or herd that would be hit hard by the particular bad weather each year, that farmland cost them the equivalent of a Cadillac and a mink coat year after year!

Then there was their own farming experience—more like Greenacres with five children, to hear Mitchell tell it. Danny would commute into the city every day, leaving his citified bride out on the swampy farm with animals that would not stay confined. For a 4-H project he got the kids some angus steer to raise. “There goes $800!” Lorraine would call out as one went running down the road. That was back when $800 was worth something. For a while they grew tomatoes for Campbell’s Soup, until they were rejected. Then there were the chickens that wouldn’t stay put.

Danny loved to work outdoors, and he relished stretching his mind. He and Lorraine never stopped taking classes after they finished their formal education. And it was ultimately that intellectual curiosity that kindled Daniel’s interest in Judaism. When Laurence was five, Lorraine insisted that they join a synagogue so that he could go to religious school. When it turned out there were adult education classes free to members, Daniel went. He went as a scoffer and emerged a believer. He became good friends with Rabbi Kantor at Skokie Valley Traditional, and continued to take class after class. Stewart admires how he struggled to learn Hebrew as an adult and never gave up.

From Woodstock, the Weisz family was on the road to Knesset Israel in Elgin sometimes five days a week. Mitch and Stewart went with their Dad every Shabbat morning. At CKI Dan became a beloved teacher. The kids respected his opinion, confided in him and listened to his advice. In 1968 Danny and Lorraine took their first trip to Israel, and they made sure each of the kids spent time there. Dan took his last trip to Israel just this past spring, with Lorraine and Jaci and Leah. It wasn’t easy for him, but he so appreciated being able to be there, and he so appreciated Jaci and Leah going with them.

Finally, they were instrumental in beginning a new congregation closer to their neighborhood. Over the 27 years, Danny made significant contributions to MCJC, but quietly. He was not interested in honors. Nevertheless every Shabbat morning he was there, he had an aliyah.

When the Weisz family migrated to Woodstock, there were maybe two other visible Jewish families. People out there were wary of Jews, but Danny won people’s trust and their hearts. For, to know him was to love him. Lawrence noted that everyone—all their friends-- wanted him as their father. He was a wonderful father. He loved having his kids work with him. Ellen started working for him when she was eleven or twelve, and she couldn’t wait until she could grow up and put on a suit and be a lawyer like her dad. He loved it that Mitch came to work with him. Of course, Mitch made him turn over the checkbook and pay more attention to the business aspect. Not that he wasn’t a good business man—his real estate investments were very smart. He knew his law and he was conscientious. And he was concerned, sincere and trusting. Even the couple of times he got taken did not faze him. He continued to trust in others and to earn their trust.

As a father, his concern for the well-being of his children didn’t cease when they left home. He instilled a strong work ethic and commitment to education in his children and grandchildren, and wanted them to be happy and successful in whatever they did. Stewart never thought he had that work ethic until a coworker asked him why he was working so hard, and he answered in his father’s voice, “that’s the only way to get anything done!”

His own work ethic never slowed. Even during these last two weeks, spent in the hospital, on days when he could barely make himself heard, he had Jaci working with him to get his work done, and arrangements being made through Mitchell and through Dan Happ, one of his many “adopted children”.

Daniel Weisz could never do enough for the people he cared for, and in addition, he deeply appreciated being taken care of, which you all did. You cooked for him-- without salt-- and made him go to the doctor and eat right, and you ran his errands, and then you sat with him and talked with the doctors and praised the nurses and exchanged jokes with him and adjusted his pillows and respected his privacy and carried out his instructions.

And you are left with a legacy of caring. You are left with the love and example of a kind, enthusiastic, responsible, compassionate mentsch with a keen mind, a love of his world and a pipeline to God.

Laurence and Ellen and Stewart and Mitchell and Jaci have each heard from another friend or neighbor or cousin: “Your father changed my life for the better.” There is no greater legacy. It is yours now, and it is yours, Samantha and Aaron, and Zachary, and Adam, and Sarah Bailey, and Iris, and Elli, and Leah. And it is ours. How else to honor such a man than to change someone else’s life for the better. Ken yehi ratzon—may it be our will.

Lorraine, Jaci, Mitch, and families;



Dan's wide smile will forever be etched in our minds! Our warm thoughts are with you.