Pathologically Genuine Draft of Chapter 2: Inheritance on a Family Tree

My evolution as a human being began with an unexpected tax break

Note: I need to do a little character development and less “telling” in this chapter, but I will come back to that.

My evolution as a human being began with an unexpected tax break.

I came into the world two weeks early on December 30, 1960. This provided an extra year for my parents to claim me as a dependent for tax purposes in 1960 even though I only existed outside the womb for 30 hours that year.

Births are often figuratively considered to be a gift. My birth was celebrated in that way by my parents. But I was different in that way and many other ways from most children. I arrived two weeks early. The universe decided to use overnight delivery to not only ensure a tax break, but to also ensure my arrival as a living, breathing, physical gift on my parent’s eighth anniversary.

That explains how I entered the world, but before I could understand what was different about me, I had to understand what I inherited.

As a biologist, that involves at least two questions: 1) What did I inherit on my family’s phylogenetic tree?; and 2) Can I separate the effects of my particular set of genes vs how the cultural environment around me shaped the expression of those genes to understand my behavior? The answers to these questions for me, as they are for most organisms, are simple- “It’s complicated.”

So, where did I come from?

My story is not dissimilar from the story of many second-generation Americans whose grandparent literally escaped the worst of human nature, and who did everything they could possibly do to protect their children from that fate. They also carried with them pain and trauma, which they tried to bury deep into the most inaccessible parts of their memories, with usually only limited success. They modeled resilience. They showed extraordinary gratitude for moments of joy, which I only recently learned to do. And they launched their children into meaningful and successful lives. At least that was true on my family tree.

My dad’s father immigrated to the United States by himself when he was twelve years old to escape the pogroms in Romania. His last name was changed to Coleman at Ellis Island. He ultimately built a successful career in the clothing business in the vibrant and bustling environment of Fifth Avenue in Pittsburgh. He was handsome with red hair and socially outgoing and confident.

My dad was in his bedroom in their duplex on Hobart Street facing the garage one evening when he was in his late teens. Hobart Street was lined with middle class homes and duplexes with detached garages. My father watched from his bedroom as his dad drove into the garage as he did most every day. His father walked out of his car and shut the garage door from the inside. He never left the garage. That was the last time my father ever saw his father alive.

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The story of my mother’s parents has components of divine fate along with somewhat similar extraordinary trauma and resilience.

They met when my grandfather escaped the being sent to the front lines to die in Romania with two other men in his late teens. Their escape path led them to a small Catholic town near Kyiv in the Ukraine. There was, however, a small Jewish population in the town. A Jewish man had died just as they were passing through. The death resulted in only nine remaining adult Jewish men left in the town meaning that there were not enough men to make the minion necessary for a Jewish funeral service.

My grandfather and the other two escapees drew straws to see who would stay behind for the funeral. My grandfather lost.

The loss lead to the collision of love and death. The daughter of the man that died became his lifelong partner and my grandmother.

My grandfather’s dedication to his values to stay in the town to make a minion, even at a potential cost, is the lesson from this story.

Later, after marrying, they both were forced to escape the pogroms in the Ukraine. They were caught by Cossacks in a field. My grandfather was made to strip naked and forced to watch as the Cossacks raped my grandmother.

Eventually my grandfather took a dead man’s papers and used those to immigrate to Montreal and then to Pittsburgh after a demand from his older brother

I cannot wrap my head around the extraordinary trauma of their experience. We only learned about the experience when my grandfather revealed it in his seventies.

The trauma was surprising and painful to learn in my twenties. But it enabled me to understand the stoic persona of my grandfather, and it explained his emotional strength, his profound ethical grounding, and how he fought for his dignity, until the day he died in a nursing home.

The trauma made no sense to me with respect to how I knew my grandmother. I was the youngest of six grandchildren and she loved me with all of her heart. She was an amazing cook. She was often my lunch partner from first through third grade. Unlike today, we were allowed to leave the school for lunch, and I often went to her apartment.

I later learned that although on the outside she was warm and loving, on the inside, there was post traumatic stress disorder and bouts of deep depression. Although I never experienced anything close to her trauma, I am also able to project warmth and kindness to students, even when fighting a battle with the demons of depression.

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My father’s story is founded in the trauma of his father’s suicide, and it is enveloped in anxiety, and probably neurodiversity. It is also one with extraordinarily funny moments, great career success, and a passion for ethical living.

My dad’s original name was Marvin. His mother would take him out for walks in a stroller with one of her friends who had a boy of the same age. That boy’s name was Morton, though he acquired a nickname “Dizzy” after the famous baseball player Dizzy Dean when he was a kid. My grandmother liked the name Morton better than Marvin, so she just started calling my dad Morton.

His identity was given away at an early age. He adapted. He officially changed his name to Morton as an adult. He was affectionately known by most everybody as “Moe.”

My mother’s naming story was much simpler. She was not given a typical Jewish name like Ruth, Sarah, or Rachel, rather she was named Greta. Her parents loved the actress Greta Garbo.

My parents knew each other for most of their lives. They lived within an area of maybe ten blocks in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood of Pittsburgh for most of their first forty years. As an adult, I never lived in the same place for more than seven years.

They married when they were 20. They had my brother Howard when they were 21 and then had me when they were 28. I have no idea whether I was planned or not. But I always knew that I was deeply loved.

My parents had a huge influence on who I became.

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My dad started off as a community organizer and civil rights activist working in settlement houses. He then moved into the Mayor of Pittsburgh’s office where he focused on addressing community development and poverty, and he also became an advisor to Henry Ford II on these issues. He earned his PhD in political science and became a professor and then interim dean in Pitt’s School of Social Work. He became Dean of the School of Social Work at the University of Connecticut when I was twelve years old.

Pre-teen joy turned to teenage suffering for me because of this move. More about that later.

My dad returned to Pittsburgh five years later and started the Institute for Politics at Pitt and continued to work and teach until he died in his sleep when he was 86. A trait I later learned that I inherited from my dad was his deep care for all of his students and an innate belief in every one of them.

The Institute of Politics became a very successful organization bringing people together across the political spectrum to solve local and regional problems. Moe wrote a memoir titled “Finding Common Ground”- the title reflects what he was most proud of in his career. I also find myself enjoying connecting people and finding common ground with them when I can get over social anxiety. I never can do so with the ease that he did.

When my father died, the Pittsburgh Post Gazette wrote their own obituary where he was referred to as “The connective tissue of Pittsburgh.” For most people outside of our family, being connective tissue in a city was celebrated. It was more challenging for family members.

For example, my favorite place we would go for breakfast was Ritter’s Diner on Liberty Avenue in Pittsburgh. The diner was relatively large with booths lining the walls of the walkways. Each booth was equipped with a 1950’s coin operated music machine with modern music selections. The diner only took cash, even until this day. At each booth there were also diner necessities of ketchup, jelly, napkins and salt and pepper.

Waitresses at this diner were mature adults who worked there for years and were usually subjected to my dad’s warmth and curiosity about people. I’d be sitting at a table with my favorite western omelet and home fries, while my dad had a 15-minute conversation with whoever was our waitress asking them at least twenty questions, beaming with appreciation of their answers. I scanned the room for frustrated patrons who were waiting for their checks.

One reason my dad loved this diner is because of the social diversity of the customers. One might see the CEO of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center or major corporations, the Mayor, or executive directors of large foundations on any given day intermixed with lower- and middle-class people of all races, ages, and ethnicities. Often, the only thing shared throughout the diner was a love/hate relationship with the Pittsburgh Steelers. I loved and still love that aspect of the diner.

My dad usually knew at least 10% of the customers, if not 90%, and he would have to say hello to all of them. This was true everywhere we went.

At Ritters, I would look up and he would wave to me. I would walk over to the table he was standing at filled with dread. My dad was extraordinarily proud of me, so much so that I wanted to be a turtle and hide in my shell.

He would say something like,

“Jim, say hello to Mayor Murphy.”

I would grudgingly comply.

Then he would say something like, “Jim, why don’t you tell the Mayor about your math exam?”

I would generally try to answer with the unembellished truth.

“OK.. Mr. Mayor, I just got my highest grade I have ever had in a math class. It was my first B+.”

Then, before the mayor could react, my dad would fantastically embellish my story. He might have said,

“Jim is clearly on his way to be a Nobel Prize winner and the next Albert Einstein”

The Mayor, not wanting to hurt my dad’s feelings, would smile as if he just met a Nobel Prize winner. I would smile back. But, inside, embarrassment made me want to be the invisible man.

My dad, like me, though, was genuine to a fault. When he told someone that I was going to be the next president of Yale when I was an undergraduate at the University of Maine, he truly believed it.

I hated the fantastical embellishment like I hate the texture of pudding.

After my dad died, though, I missed it. I was recognized as one of two distinguished alums at the Yale School of the Environment’s 125^th reunion in 2025. I found myself wanting the world to acknowledge it, and it was barely acknowledged by anyone who wasn’t at the reunion. So, that made me hope that my dad was running around the afterlife, telling everyone he knew about the award, or even that I had just won the Nobel Prize. If there are social interactions in the afterlife, I know he told everyone about it.

Although my dad never allowed me to be humble when I was with him. He was actually a very humble person, which definitely rubbed off on me.

When my parents needed to move to assisted living in their eighties, my dad and I went to their apartment to clean it out and save anything important. I pulled out a large duffle bag out of the closet piled high with forgotten memories. The duffle bag was filled to the brim with award plaques and statues. I think my father must have received an award from every non-profit in Pittsburgh and their non-profit children. I truly had no idea. One would think that award statues and plaques want to be proudly displayed since that was their life’s meaning when they were created. But my dad didn’t display any of them, causing them a life of darkness and despair. I felt sad for them when we decided not to keep any of them. And one can’t really donate award plaques and statues to Goodwill.

The University of Pittsburgh also committed itself to keep Moe’s memory alive when they created the Coleman Award for Community Service. A video was made for the 12^th anniversary of the Coleman Award, after my dad had died. In the video, a former colleague and community activist said that what was special about my dad was that he actually cared about poor people. I learned later in life that I inherited this trait as well, or at least I inherited a great sense of meaning for helping students with sparse financial resources.

One would think that someone with such an accomplished life would not live with extraordinary self-doubt and anxiety. But he did.

I inherited some of his best traits such as caring about and believing in every student. I also inherited being a workaholic, self-doubt, and probably some of the neuroses from the trauma he experienced from his dad’s suicide.

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My mom, Greta, was also exceptional, but in quieter, more grounded, and far less anxious ways.

For example, it was really hard to talk to my dad when I was suffering from depression or something disappointing like getting rejected by an employer or a girl. Any bumps in my road caused his anxiety to explode. So, his response was always to try and fix whatever was making me down or just try convince me that what I was feeling was not true. That never helped. When things got tough in my life as an adult, he was not the person I would call. And that hurt him.

My mother was the opposite. She was extraordinarily proud of me, too. But her emotions had absolutely no tie to mine. I remember calling her on a weekend when I was experiencing overwhelming loneliness.

My mom would say “are you OK?”

Then she would hug me with her voice and gently change the subject.

“Have you talked to your brother lately?

Lines like that would immediately interrupt the focus on myself and placed my thoughts back into the world. Plus, I enjoyed talking about my brother.

My mom was also a totally genuine person who tried very hard to be independent and to live her values. She was also way more secure than me and my father. She inherited the warmth of her mother and the emotional strength, ethical grounding, and independence of my grandfather.

In the 1960s. she was a special education teacher at Baxter Elementary School in Homewood, one of Pittsburgh roughest neighborhoods. Most of her friends did not work. And, if they did, it would not have been in Homewood. She also had a gift for caring about students. Even 60 years later, some of her students would still contact her and tell her what they meant to them.

In the late 1970s, my mom went back to school and received a master’s degree in social work. She then developed a new career as social worker working with organ transplant patients in the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. She never talked much about her accomplishments. After she died, my brother and I learned that she was one of the founding members of the professional society for transplant social workers. We even learned that she had published a peer reviewed paper in a medical journal presenting data on the role of a person’s faith in recovering from heart transplants.

I know my dad was extraordinarily proud of her, but he didn’t brag about her like he did with just about everyone else in our extended family. We were both surprised that he never bragged about those specifics with us. We were not really surprised that our mother didn’t sing her accomplishments. She was too busy being our support system and safety net and being the stable foundation for my dad.

My mom was also an irreverent rebel in other ways that I would like to think I inherited. Most of her friends married doctors, lawyers or businessmen and had way more money than we did. She was proud to have married a community organizer even though she couldn’t keep up with their spending power. She was feisty, too. I remember her bringing home a picket sign with an angry message to the Pittsburgh School Board and not caring one bit that my dad was on the school board with high anxiety about a teacher’s strike.

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I culturally or genetically inherited much from my parents and their parents.

On the positive side I am an empath, proudly irreverent, with innate drive, and the ability of fully air-filled basketball to bounce back. On the negative side, despite great career success, I know anxiety and self-doubt all too well, with the insecurity of my father, and the darkness of depression that were akin to what was experienced by my dad’s father and my mom’ mother.

If my family tree proved anything, it was that I came from a phylogenetic branch with ancestors that carried pain and anxiety while still finding ways to care, love, laugh, succeed in their professional lives, stay true to their values, and to be unapologetically themselves, even with the high costs that can bring. I would like to think that by the end of this book, one might even think these words would be an appropriate obituary for me.

Yet, I was always different. So, is my story. I don’t think anyone on my family tree would relate to feeling like a banana slug finding itself in the Mojave desert with no appropriate evolutionary adaptations to draw on.

A question, thus, still remains in this metaphor.

“Would desert organisms refer to any banana slug in their midst as crazy., and if they would, would it be true?”