World citizen brought culture into our lives

To the editor:

Herbert Hirschfield's son remembers asking his mother about the worn little man approaching their house. Ted had a vague recollection of his father, who had been impressed into the army of the Third Reich. When it dissolved, Hirschfield wandered about until he found his family, who believed that he had long been dead.

With his wife and two sons, the worn soldier began a new life, which would take him to America and to Chicago, where he was a Baptist minister to German-Ukranian congregations. His vivid table graces stay with me. He recalled a life of danger and wandering and loneliness, but now, praise God, that was behind, and he and his wife lived a life of joy.

At their supper table I ate what I had never eaten before, including two kinds of cooked turnips, yellow and white. Since then I who had always disliked cooked turnips have been a two-color turnip man.

He lent me a copy of a long novel he had written, a kind of bucolic of another world and time. He brought into our lives a breadth of culture. I will miss this citizen of several worlds.

PETER HILTY

Cape Girardeau