Henry Kurt Silberman: The Centenary of His Birth

This is a different kind of post. Today my father would have been 100 years old. Born on December 19, 1914, in Breslau, Germany, he died 11 years ago, December 3, 2003, in Richmond, Virginia. For some time I have made a few starts and stops at trying to put together photos, history, etc., but have not managed to produce a complete product. There is a Googlepages site I worked on some time ago--this includes transcriptions of some of his own memories, some documents, some WWII VMail to his parents--and on which I hope to continue to add.

Today, however, I don't have the time to add extensively to that record, but I thought I would do something more in keeping with this blog and do a little more wandering to honor Dad on this day. So while I, too, can add to the Internet, for other wanderers, one great thing about the Internet is that there is stuff all over the place, but as random as can be.


One generally expects to find obituaries online, but the long article about Dad from the Richmond Times Dispatch no longer appears available (their archives only go to 2004), so one can only read the one I have preserved. One can still read the shorter death notice we provided in The Washington Post, as well as reprinted one from the Columbia (MO) Daily Tribune on my high school alumni site. Or you can view his C.V. when he joined the Medical College of Virginia, in the November 1972 issue of the Scarab, its house organ.

After that, one has to rely on the randomness of the Internet, for what has made it to the pixes and bytes of the ether. Searching for "Henry K Silberman" or "Henry Kurt Silberman" (or even "Henry Silberman" if you want to wade through others of the same name) can get you to a few other places, even for a man who only had a chance to dabble in that world himself. For example, I see that the Military Times has a project of posting all medals of valor, so you can see the Legion of Merit he received on retiring from the U.S. Army Medical Corps in 1965 (or in the original print order).  Staying in the same year, you can read a news report on an address he gave nurses in Macon, Missouri, about the development of Mid-Missouri Mental Health Center in Columbia. And, from a couple years later, you can see a thumbnail of a photo of him ("With him is Dr. Henry K. Silberman Assistant superintendent") in the January 29, 1967, Jefferson City Sunday News & Tribune in an article on the opening of the Center (or pay and see the whole page in full).

The Internet can be a funny place, especially as companies try to monetize their services, but it can also have emotional reach. Sometimes access opens up and closes, hiding great information behind pay walls. Classmates.com is one such site, which I have used to help with high school reunion planning, etc. A few months ago, I came across a note someone had left me more than a year earlier:

Quick note from [hidden]: Hi Ralph, a few years ago I read the obituary for your father on the Hickman class news pages. Your father's story was very moving. I want to tell you how much your father helped my father, [calling him Bill]. Henry Silberman has legendary status in my family for the way he treated [Bill], who was his patient. Your father recognized that a big part of [Bill]'s worries were related to money (the lack of it) and so he told [Bill] on his first visit that he would never send him a bill. I think your father was a healer in the truest sense. You probably don't remember me, but I remember sitting on the bus with you after school, talking 1968 politics. I'm glad to have this chance to tell you this story about your father.

This is something that we would never have learned without this wonder of communication. In a similar vein, today I came across this link to an article in the Salem (NY) Press from October 21, 1954, in which Dad is cited as having written a letter of commendation to a nurse from that area (one Margaret Leah Gorman) who was serving as a Lieutenant at Fitzsimmons Army Hospital, where he was then stationed. Just another example of how one never knows what one's parent does at work.

And then we get the oddities:

• someone is trying to sell a copy of his 1950 NYU Medical School yearbook on eBay and has listed all the names of individuals pictured in it.
• Google books has a scan of a 1959 Army, Navy, Air Force Journal article that one cannot see all of, but which references a citation for his services in Stuttgart from 1956-1959, and which mentions not only all three of his children, but our home address!
• Google books shows a bit of a page from "Judeus em Portugal durante a II Guerra Mundial: em fuga de Hitler e do Holocausto" which uses his story about being his prison stay in Lisbon, which one of the authors had received from him. [Interestingly, she dates her communication from June 18, 1997, but Dad's English version for us is dated 1994; don't know if he had further communications with her or not.]

So, until I resume back-filling the internet with more of Dad's story, let us remember him today (and tomorrow, and the day after tomorrow, depending on when this gets read!). He traveled far in his almost 89 years, including a journey of exile, which my sisters and I have luckily not have had to experience ourselves. Thank you, Dad.