My uncle Ralph

Ralph Lowenstein, my beautiful uncle, died peacefully on Friday, August 1, his beloved daughter Joey and son-in-low Bill Goetz by his side as he drew the final breath of his remarkable life of leadership, service and love.  

It was a life that began under harrowing circumstances.  Uncle Ralph was born Hans Rolf with the Hebrew name of Samel in northwestern Germany in February 1932, less than a year before Adolf Hitler assumed power, dismantled the fledgling Weimar democracy and began to systematically uproot the presence of previously integrated Jewish families, business, and institutions from the fabric of mainstream life.

Like other women in our family, Grandma Hilda grasped the perilous direction in which the nation was headed and the urgency of the moment.  But Grandpa Max, who had been injured in the trenches while fighting for Germany in World War I, did not initially shed his conviction that this was his country, that Hitler was a madman whose time would pass, and that the family should stay to weather the storm.

Being arrested by the Gestapo in front of his family helped change his mind. Uncle Ralph recalled that terrifying moment of removal, which happened when he was just 6 years old, in his 1996 interview with Steven Spielberg’s Shoah Foundation:

I don’t remember what time it was but to me it seemed to be the middle of the night-that two plainclothes Gestapo men coming to our door and telling my father to take along … two pair of socks and a razor and come with them.  Of course, my mother was hysterical.  She knew why he was being taken away.  Of course, my brother and I were needless to say very upset also, mainly because we didn’t know what was happening to our father and my mother’s obviously very emotional reaction.

The elder son never learned where his father had been taken, but he did see the bruises and other remnants of the physical beatings he had been subjected to during his 10 days or so of detention.  The physical abuse told my grandfather, a lawyer who had supported other Jews in getting out of similar circumstances and in leaving the country, that he needed to do the same for his family.  

The parents took an act of incalculable courage in sending their children away to save them.  Uncle Ralph traveled first to England on the Kindertransport on June 20, 1939.  Dad followed exactly a month later and just six weeks before Hitler invaded Germany, ending the programme and launching the Second World War that led to the murder of more than six million Jews and millions of other victims like gay and lesbian people, Roma and Sinti, and Jehovah’s Witnesses.

Uncle Ralph and dad were extraordinarily fortunate to spend the following 14 months under the loving, attentive and strict care of Ruth Stern, an eccentric, Cambridge-educated Jewish woman who served as the headmistress of Locks Heath Primary School for about three decades.  Her mother took the boys in as her grandsons, acting as an Oma, Uncle Ralph told me during one of our last conversations.  He gained fluency in English before Dad and he traveled by the Samaria to the United States, arriving in late 1940 and reuniting with their parents, who had escaped earlier that year after boarding a boat in Genoa, Italy.  

The family moved soon afterward at Uncle Ernie’s recommendation to Cincinnati, where the parents went about the business of rebuilding a life in a country where they had neither language nor culture nor any advantage. With the exception of his attendance at Miami of Ohio and his military service on the East Coast, Uncle Ralph stayed there until this past January, when Joey moved him to the Atlanta area to secure better care for him in what turned out to be his final months.

In Cincinnati, he went to school in Avondale and Hughes High School after a brief stint at Walnut Hills High School when his negotiation with the principal about avoiding future Latin study went poorly. After graduating from Ohio University he moved on from his photography major to become a traveling salesman and later a partner in H. Wolf and Sons, growing the business until the team sold it and he retired shortly before turning 60.  

Outside of work, he and Aunt Fran, the love of his life with whom he forged a partnership that lasted nearly seven decades, he made a family that included Jimmy and Joey.  He cared for Grandma Hilda during her painful battle with breast cancer, and, after that, moved Grandpa Max to Glen Manor.  He became chairman of the nursing home’s board that oversaw a merger between Orthodox and Reform parts of the business.  

Uncle Ralph was a leader in the local SCORE chapter for close to two decades, helping hundreds of small business owners with his wise and strategic counsel, and read for the blind weekly for years in that unmistakably calm, smooth and even voice. He took endless numbers of friends to lunch and dinner, retaining until deep into his 80s the ability to grab the check with the speed of a frog’s tongue snagging a wayward fly.  Despite trying hard, I never got there first and saw it as a mark of his high regard for Bill that he would permit his son-in-law to pay for the meal.  

The loving bond he developed with Bill overcame a shaky foundation. While Aunt Fran looked outraged when Bill announced at their 1987 rehearsal dinner that basketball, not Joey, was his first love, it would be safe to say that this pronouncement did not fill Uncle Ralph with joy.  Nevertheless, he provided guidance to Bill as he began what became a spectacularly successful business career as well as a devoted husband and father to Emma, J.R. and Cooper.  

Uncle Ralph became a loving and doting grandfather and the owner of Pa’s Driving School, which the three children all attended-a move which I understand helped preserve domestic harmony in the Goetz household.  When Joey and Bill moved to Minneapolis, Uncle Ralph hosted J.R. for his senior year in high school. 

In 1986, Uncle Ralph and Aunt Fran buried their son Jimmy, just 27 years old. He never got over the loss that has no name because it contradicts the natural passage of the generations, at times sighing heavily and sitting in silence in the living room of Fallen Branch. But he and Fran found it within themselves to create the Jim Lowenstein Professorship of Medicine at Louisiana Stata University shortly after Jimmy’s death-a fund that, through their donations and investments, has grown to close to $1 million. 

He became the custodian of our family’s history, holding the bible his grandfather and my namesake Joseph Lowenstein had bought for his parents’ 25th wedding anniversary and then given to Karl Guntermann, a non-Jewish family and dear friend, in 1942 when it was clear he was going to be deported and all but certainly would not survive.  The 1874 Gustav Dore edition was inscribed with our family’s history stretching back five generations to the late 18th century The Guntermanns kept the bible at great risk for more than two decades before Ernie retrieved it and gave it to Grandpa Max for his 70th birthday.  Uncle Ralph amassed family affidavits and letters, wrote the International Red Cross to find out what had happened to our relatives and clipped articles related to the Kindertransport that he stored in the case that held the bible. 

It was one of the honors of my life, when, after consulting with Joey and Dad, Uncle Ralph asked me to hold the bible along with Dunreith.  As we drove from Michigan to  to get it in 2019, I felt much the same as I imagined one feels when going to pick up an adopted child-excitement and anticipation mingling with the incomplete belief that the transfer would happen until after it had taken place and nerves that I would be up for the task.  

Driven by his bone deep love of family, he did all of this without complaint and, despite the many hardships he endured, while retaining his sweet core that included a deadpan sense of humor that would surface at unanticipated moments.  Like the time when I asked him if the spacious office at Fallen Branch that he had shown with pride had played a role in his marriage lasting 49 years.  “You have no idea,” he said with a wry smile and twinkle in his eye.

Or when he responded to hearing about Dad and Lee’s sharing about some back seat necking during their high school by saying, “Been there, done that.” 

Uncle Ralph and I didn’t see each other much during my childhood, but that absence only heightened my gratitude that he lived long enough for us to develop a strong relationship forged and cemented by visits, good food and the love of family.  He did the same thing with so many people he encountered, including those he met during his brief time in the Atlanta area; with Aidan, who treasured their calls and in person visits; and with Dunreith, with whom he had a particular closeness.  When we would take pictures at the end of our visits, Uncle Ralph would allow me to put my arm around him, but always drew Dunreith close to him.  He didn’t argue when I pointed this pattern out to him.  

We weren’t sure how he would do following Aunt Fran’s death in 2022, but he heeded Joey’s suggestion of seeking support and brought his fierce will to live to bear and have happy moments and months despite living on hospice for several years.     

Uncle Ralph retained a profound sense of gratitude for all he had received until the very end of his life.  Joey topped that list, which included other family members, friends like Dr. Mejer, with whom he ate nearly every meal inside and outside of Greenwood following their spouses’ deaths within a couple of months of each other, and all the caregivers who assisted him.  

In our final conversation on July 23, I told him about my trip back to Locks Heath, where, with his help, I saw where he had lived and the principal’s log book where Ruth Stern had noted in black cursive letters on September 29, 1939 his introduction to a doctor who detected a faint heart murmur due to stress of living in Germany.  Uncle Ralph told me he would like to read the book I am working on about our family’s history.  “I’m 93 and I want to be around for a long time,” he said.  That day did not come, but I will dedicate it to him and feel his presence on every page.  

In typical fashion, his final words to me were, “Thank you.” 

The truth of course is that we are the one who should and do feel inexpressible gratitude to Uncle Ralph for paving the way, showing us how to shoulder difficulty with courage and character, how to love family, serve others and advocate for himself.  Because of who he was and how he lived, he will live in us as long as we are around, and, as Aidan noted, after that in the work that we do, the stories that we tell, and the love that he spread and that will continue to ripple out in the world. 

Thank you, Uncle Ralph, for what my brother Mike described as your unfailingly kind, calm, generous and considerate nature, and for all that you did for our family, the world and me.  I hope you know how much I loved you and how much I will continue to strive to be worthy of the legacy you left all of us throughout your meaningful, rich, and contributory life. 

By Jeff Kelly Lowenstein

Author is the executive director of the Center for Collaborative Investigative Journalism (CCIJ) and an associate professor of journalism at Grand Valley State University.

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