See What The Future Brings

By David E. Lasker

David E. Lasker has lived his life always looking to see what the future brings. This inspirational memoir tells his story—with humor and insight of what a son, brother, father, and dedicated friend can do once they bare their soul in the lives of others. In this book, he has fulfilled what he said in the opening chapter:

"My personal story isn't significant. What I hope to address in this book is who I am, what I stand for, and how I came to be here. My hope is that by baring my soul I may somehow make a difference. I am an ordinary person with nothing that makes me more special than the next guy. But each of us is unique and capable of contributing to the good of humanity. And I have always longed to make a difference."

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Jun 15, 2022
• ISBN: 9781667834610

Book preview

Foreword

The sun shined brightly on Lake Delton in Wisconsin on an early summer afternoon in August of 2019. I looked down on the lake from the veranda of my condominium several stories above the lakeshore. I was sharing the beautiful day with a dear friend of mine, Michael, who lost his eyesight a few years ago in a tragic accident. He was visiting me for the weekend and was doing a remarkable job of getting around and taking care of himself as my houseguest. I was impressed by his commitment and perseverance in learning to deal with his profoundly new circumstances. Although he couldn’t see the gorgeous view in front of us and didn’t fully know how much activity there was out on the lake at the time, he was so elated by the warmth of the sunshine, the fresh air, and the sounds of summertime gaiety that he couldn’t stop telling me how beautiful my home was and what fun he was having visiting. It seemed as if he could see the wonderful scene through all his senses, even though he didn’t have eyesight. He could just feel it, and I was feeling it too.

Just then, a boat was heading toward the dock of the condo below us. As it came closer, I saw that it was my friend Malcolm and his fourteen-year-old daughter Julia, waiving and calling to us as we stood at the balcony railing. This was an unexpected visit, and I was surprised. Malcolm must have brought his boat and trailer from his home miles away and put it in the lake at a boat ramp across the lake. I waived down to them, and they yelled for us to come down and get in for a ride on the lake.

Malcolm is a close friend, and he knew our mutual friend Michael was visiting me. He and Julia wanted to surprise us with this treat. We went down to the dock slowly and carefully, and then Malcolm and I ushered Michael into the boat as it was rocking in waves alongside the dock. It was a precarious operation, but somehow we managed it without anyone going overboard. This was an unprecedented thing for Michael to be doing, but he – and all of us – were having a great time as we snacked, went at various speeds, stopped sometimes, and Julia and Malcolm occasionally went into the water for a swim. We were out on the lake for about 90 minutes before ending up back at our dock.

While we were talking, there was considerable discussion about where Julia would be going to high school in September, when she started as a freshman. Though friendly, her parents never married, and Julia spent much of her life sharing single parents, currently with her mother living and working in Madison, Wisconsin and her father living and working in Baraboo – about a 45-minute drive north of Madison near Wisconsin Dells and Lake Delton. She had attended private schools up to then in Madison, but she was torn between going to public high school in the bigger city of Madison or the much smaller city of Baraboo. Either way, she would, as always, spend a lot of time with each parent.

Michael appreciated the kind hospitality of Julia and Malcolm, and I thought the whole thing was great. In no particular hurry, we tied up at the pier as securely as we could. The water was choppy, and the boat moved a lot. While Malcolm and I were securing Michael to sit on the pier, Michael sought to conclude the conversation with Julia about high school by asking her flat-out what her choice would be. She gave a thoughtful response but ultimately said she wasn’t sure. Julia was now up on the pier, having helped to steady the boat. Acting out her 14-year-old free spirit; dancing with delight, she said, We’ll just have to see what the future brings.

Her response struck me, and Michael immediately remarked that it was a great statement. We’ll just have to see what the future brings. There was something simple and profound in what she said, especially in the easy-going way she said it.

Michael and I reflected on it later that day, and a couple of times since then, because there was something hauntingly mature about it. As I thought about it, I realized that’s the way I’ve always approached things. We all do a lot to influence the unfolding of our lives, but in the end we really do have to see what the future brings. It’s the story of my life. It’s probably why I’ve had such an interesting and fulfilling life.

So, while writing this book, I decided that See What the Future Brings should be the title of my memoir – my life story. I hope you enjoy the book as much as I’ve enjoyed living my life this way.

And, thank you, Julia!

Chapter One

Getting to Know Me

For many years, I’ve said to family and friends, I’m going to write a memoir someday. Usually, they humor me and say, Yes, you really should. And, now, much to my surprise, I have begun to do just that. It’s not too early. I am seventy-five years old, a father and grandfather, still working full-time, and by the grace of God, still in good health. But I have to admit, I’m not getting any younger.

I’m not now, nor have I ever been, famous. And yet none of my friends or family has ever said to me, You? Why should you write a memoir?

I have had an interesting life. I was born in Salt Lake City, Utah, and went to Horace Greeley High School in Chappaqua, New York. I’ve lived on an Indian reservation, been a sixth-grade teacher, radio newscaster, director of a day camp for young children, counselor and administrator at a camp for emotionally disturbed children from the inner city, candidate for district attorney, guest on The Oprah Winfrey Show, chief of staff of a national vice-presidential campaign, civil rights lawyer fighting for the little guy for thirty-three years, and now county attorney for a rural Wisconsin county for over a decade.

I’ve argued in the United States Supreme Court, had a conversation with Sen. Ted Kennedy while he was nude in a bathtub, had a long one-on-one conversation with Bobby Kennedy in his Senate office—with his clothes on—and I’ve seen Oprah’s underpants. I’ve got a lot to write about.

As I start this project, it is November 30, 2020. The country has just voted to send Donald Trump packing, and everyone is talking about the strangeness of his departure. We are in the midst of a pandemic, and people are dying all over the nation and the world. I am deeply worried about my country—really, deeply worried. It seems that our democracy is on the brink of collapse, after being battered and torn on a daily basis by our president for the past four years.

If you had told me as a young man that the day would come in my lifetime when the Constitution and our basic norms and ideals would be threatened by the sitting president, I would have laughed it off as ridiculous. Today, I can’t believe it has come to this, and all we have come to rely upon seems precarious.

My personal story isn’t significant. What I hope to address in this book is who I am, what I stand for, and how I came to be here. My hope is that by baring my soul, I may somehow make a difference. I am an ordinary person with nothing that makes me more special than the next guy. But each of us is unique and capable of making a contribution to the good of humanity. And I have always longed to make a difference.

What I want to talk about is love, compassion, gratitude, spirituality, letting go, being present, opinions and judgments, openness and acceptance, integrity, friendship, co-dependency, addiction, recovery, joy, happiness, and all the things I have thought about, done, and experienced along the way of becoming three-quarters of a century old. I am going to lay it all out there in the hope that something sticks with you as interesting, thought-provoking, humorous, memorable, or otherwise worthwhile. I hope you will discover something interesting about yourself in the course of hearing my story.

I grew up with a silver spoon in my mouth, and I didn’t realize that until I went off to college. I knew my community was affluent. I knew my public high school was like a college campus with many teachers having master’s degrees or even Ph.Ds. Whatever I wanted to buy, I could charge to my parents’ accounts at the clothing store, gas stations, and pharmacy. When I would take the fifty-minute train ride from Chappaqua to New York City, we went through Harlem and had a close view of extreme poverty, but I still didn’t fully comprehend the unique and incredible advantages I had. I thought most of America was just like my world.

The house I grew up in was three stories high with twenty-six rooms, including six bedrooms, six bathrooms, six fireplaces, a large kitchen surrounded by a big dining room, a separate breakfast room, two walk-in pantries, a storeroom, and a long driveway with a three-car garage, on five acres of land abutting a small lake. We had hired live-in help for cooking and housecleaning and a laundress who came in once a week to wash and iron clothes.

My family of origin in 1958 in our living room at the house where I grew up in Chappaqua, New York. The picture was for a brochure for my father’s campaign for the elective part-time position of justice of the peace. Left to right: My father, 41, myself, 13, my sister Kristen, 10, my brother Timothy, 7, my brother Harry, 15, and my mother, 39.

Despite all that, my parents were down-to-earth and reminded me, my older brother, and my younger sister and brother of how fortunate we were and how grateful we should be. They were generous and philanthropic and didn’t bother with fancy cars or other such trappings of affluence. They were humble and easygoing. I learned gratitude and humility from them, and that blessing has stuck with me throughout my life.

The greening of David Lasker as far as the real world is concerned began the summer after I graduated from high school in 1963. I worked at a summer camp for emotionally disturbed children from the inner city of New York, run by the Federation of Jewish Philanthropies. The camp was called Camp Ramapo and was in Rhinebeck, New York, about ninety miles north of the city on the Hudson River. Up to the time I was hired as a counselor, they had never had anyone on the staff with less than a few years of college. Some counselors even had graduate degrees. As someone fresh out of high school, I was just the person the camp director, Bob Thomases, was looking for to test out his theory that high school students were capable of being counselors to these children with special needs. The campers were approximately eight to sixteen-year-old boys and girls, who were either passive or aggressive. The passive children ranged from autistic to extremely shy and fearful. The aggressive children were mostly holy terrors, who often were in trouble at school or with the law when living at home. The youngest ones were easier to control physically but seemed to be well on the way to following in the footsteps of the older ones.

The camp was a phenomenal place designed and crafted by director Bob Thomases with his experienced senior staff. It was modeled as a place where every child, whether passive or aggressive, could be successful at things they may have never imagined doing before. All the activities and projects were designed to have the camper win—whether it was at sports or making potholders for the first time. Bob was a long-time physical education and driver’s education teacher at a Long Island high school, and his two head counselors, Nick and Sam, were also experienced high school teachers on Long Island.

The summer began with a week of in-service training for the counselors before the children arrived, during which everyone learned about being an activities counselor or a bunk counselor for the boys and the girls, both passive and aggressive. Bob taught strategies for helping a child experience success and how to create success at arts and crafts, sports, swimming, boating, and canoeing. He emphasized the positive and told us not to sweat the small stuff: If they don’t brush their teeth the whole time they’re here, who cares as long as they are feeling their own power at play and in relationships? He told us how to cure a child of bedwetting, which was a common problem for lots of the kids at the beginning of camp: All our mattresses have plastic coverings. If the camper wets the bed, that’s fine. All they have to do is strip the sheets and blankets off the bed and put them in the hampers outside each cabin. Then, they take their mattress—perhaps with the help of another camper or counselor—to the mattress supply cabin and pick up a new, fresh one. Nobody has to talk about anything, and no enuretic has to feel shame. And believe it or not, in nine cases out of ten each camp session, the bedwetters stopped wetting their beds. It wasn’t worth all that trouble!

I don’t know why I was the high school graduate they hired, but I did become the first and only counselor without college experience at camp during my first summer. Bob took me under his wing from the beginning. He assigned me as a bunk counselor for passive young boys and then for aggressive fifteen to sixteen-year-olds. I was placed on the waterfront to teach boating and swimming, then in the arts and crafts building, and then on playing fields as a counselor for both sexes and all ages. I learned to love children and to enjoy being with them. The staff’s social life was wonderful too, after the kids were asleep. I made lots of lasting friendships among the counselors and administrators.

During my second summer, between my first and second years of college, more counselors were high school students in their junior or senior years, or recent graduates. I felt like an old-timer. Obviously, Bob felt his theory about young counselors was verified by my performance the previous summer, and the board of directors of the camp must have liked all the money saved on counselors’ salaries.

One of the things that always stuck with me was what Bob Thomases told us at the end of my second summer, when we counselors were feeling despair over the fact that summer was over and the kids were going back to life in Harlem, Bedford–Stuyvesant, and the inner city. He said that, for the children, their time here was like learning to ride a bike. Now, they will always be able to ride the bicycle, whenever they want to pick it up again. It doesn’t go away. That was soothing.

In my third summer, I was hired to be one of camp’s administrators as an assistant head counselor. It was the number three position in the camp’s organizational structure, and I was surprised when Bob not only offered me the position but urged me to take it. He was confident I would do a good job. I was less sure of that because the majority of the counselors were noticeably older than I was. I was apprehensive but excited and proud to have the opportunity. During my second summer at camp, I had come to enjoy widespread popularity, and I really valued those friendships. Now I was worried that being one of the authorities in the hierarchy would be a problem. As it turned out, my relationships continued to grow and prosper. I loved my time there.

I learned a lot about leadership and being an effective administrator, while I was eighteen to twenty years old, which I always carried with me. I learned much about children, especially those with special needs, and I grew up socially and emotionally. The camp was a humane place, where everyone seemed to be at their best. I think more than anything, being there taught me about the power and possibility of community. Bob Thomases was a true mentor to me, as few others have ever been. He opened my eyes to life in a special way and always seemed committed to my success and well-being.

You could never know what Bob would be up to next, and during my third summer at camp, he served up a doozy! He wanted me to partner with him on a project that meant a lot to him, having to do with the shortage of thousands of teachers at the time in New York City, especially in low-income areas. Bob’s idea was to offer college and graduate students credits toward their teaching degrees in return for hours spent as teachers or teachers’ assistants in the classrooms throughout the city. It was a win-win situation, and I thought it was a great idea.

All Bob wanted from me was to sell it to Robert F. Kennedy, who had recently been elected to represent New York in the United States Senate.

I was flabbergasted and couldn’t imagine what he expected me to do. I knew he thought highly of me, but this was ridiculous. However, as I listened to him, I could see that there was an inner logic. In one of our earlier conversations, I had mentioned to Bob that the best friend of an uncle of mine with whom I was close was Joe Dolan, whom Kennedy had recently appointed to be his top senate aide—his administrative assistant. Bob hoped I could prevail upon Dolan to get me a brief audience with the senator to pitch the idea to him. And, ultimately, I was able to do so.

The meeting was set to be at the senator’s New York office in Manhattan. I rode down to the city on the train with Bob, as he continued to discuss with me the details of his proposal. I could hardly believe I was going to meet Bobby Kennedy. When I arrived at Kennedy’s office—without Bob Thomases, who insisted I could and should handle this without him and remained outside of the building—Joe Dolan was there to greet me. I hadn’t met him before either, but it was all easygoing and friendly from the beginning. He asked about my family and told me that the senator would be able to see me in his office shortly. Before I realized it, he was escorting me into Kennedy’s office where RFK and I shook hands over his desk, and I sat down opposite him. Joe Dolan stayed in the room but to one side and behind me. Kennedy was cordial and soft spoken to begin with. As we talked, he peppered me with questions and became somewhat strident. After about ten to fifteen minutes of being put through my paces under what came to feel like cross-examination, I was starting to feel defensive. In a surge of feelings of inadequacy, I said, I’m sorry, Senator, but I am here to present an idea, which I believe is a really good idea, and I guess I’ll have to leave it to you and your staff to work out the details. Immediately, I was embarrassed, but he cut that short by winking at Dolan and saying, I like this kid! With some pride and great relief, I eased into the meeting being over. Again, Kennedy was gracious in saying good-bye.

I hooked up with Bob Thomases out on the street and briefed him on how it went. I don’t know any of the details, but within a year, Bob told me the idea was being implemented and was going well. What an experience!

I came from a political family. My mother, Toy Lasker, was a state committeewoman in the Democratic Party. While I was growing up, my father, Morris Lasker, was a successful lawyer in a firm with offices on Park Avenue in Manhattan. In 1950, when I was five, Dad was the Democratic Party candidate for Congress in the district that included White Plains, N.Y. It was a heavily Republican district, and his opponent was a prominent longtime Republican leader in the House of Representatives at the time. Dad lost overwhelmingly, but as the sacrificial lamb of his party in the election, he had proudly led a good campaign, which I’m sure was helpful later on in 1968 when he was appointed as a United States District Judge for the Southern District of New York by President Lyndon Johnson on the recommendation of Senator Robert Kennedy.

While I was in high school, before Dad became a federal judge, he was elected justice of the peace of our local township. For many years, he was also president of the board of education in our community. He was the guy who handed me my high school diploma at our commencement. In typical good humor, instead of shaking my hand as we both knew he was supposed to, he handed me the diploma, grabbed my other hand, spun me around, gave me a big kiss on the cheek, and slapped me on the butt as I returned to my place among my classmates. That brought a big cheer and lots of laughter from the crowd. I was proud of it, but a funny thing happened only minutes later when the graduating seniors were in a receiving line. People walking by me in my place in line started to acknowledge the incident in good humor but at the same time most of them leaned in and discreetly said something