he was my friend...his wife had been tortured by the germans when she was younger, before they married, which is why he came to the US--she needed extreme medical help, and after some years, it was necessary to institutionalize her....his son never forgave hime for doing that...so Ernie was pretty much alone, except for his work, but he had retired abut a year before I met him. When I first met him, it was through some people I had just recently met. He had had surgury on his foot and could not drive his car, clean his house, yada yada...so I offered to help the others, help him out. WEll, we understood each other, and so we liked hanging around together--I wasn't telling him what to do or how to do it!!!
So I drove, and we went out for dinner every night, I cleaned his house, which was a mess!!!! took him to the grocery store, and stuff like that. He did not take to strangers coming into his house--like a maid service---and was very very quiet socially, although he could play DeBussey perfectly on the piano...he wrote poetry, which I do, so another thing in common. He was the one of the most interesting people I had ever been blessed to know beyond the superficial 'hello, how are you'. He spoke something like 8 languages, so volunteered at the cancer hospitals as an interpreter, and got the Houston Mayors award for that a couple of times over the years. And he developed a system where a paraplegiac could use the computer using eye movements, or muscle movements in the fingers--and he GAVE that to the Veterans' Administration, even though he held the patents--he gave it away...After he died, his sister asked that I gather together things about him, media stuff, personal writings that I knew of, yada yada, and interview some of his friends that I knew...because there was a Book to be written about him....I don't know if that has been done---but he was pretty well known as an incredible human being....I learned during a wake service for him, that in the Jewish faith, the number of middle names at the end of his life,means something about a person...well Ernie had enough middle names that he was considered a high priest.....
He was no show-off kind of personality, some would say he was more the wallflower, to look at him, short, long nose, not talkative, stood to the side in social functions, but he was one of the most incredible people I knew, and a great great teacher to me. We were often referred to as the 'magical thinkers'...hahahahahaha
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