Happy Harvey Redak Day

Mark it down, please: Friday, Jan. 10, as Harvey Redak Day.

Never heard of it? Well, I have the proclamation right here on my desk. Not from the governor, or any state or local official. Still, it is proper looking, and it contains the requisite numbers of ​“To Wit” and ​“Whereas,” even if the only signature at the bottom is mine.

Please be assured, however, I ask very little of you in celebrating the new holiday. It is not one that requires staying home from work, or fasting, or sitting all day in house of worship.

Harvey Redak Day asks only that you pause for a moment to appreciate the blithe and generous spirits who have lived among us, from whom we have all profited in some way.

You’re excused, certainly, if you’re asking at this point, ​“Who is Harvey Redak?” Or, more pertinently, ​“Who was Harvey Redak?” as he died three years ago at the age of 78.

And, as talented as he was as a trumpeter, he was not usually included in any listing of our state’s prized musical geniuses: say, Dave Brubeck, Jerry Mulligan, Leonard Bernstein, Richard Rodgers, Stephen Sondheim, or even Michael Bolton or Gene Pitney.

Who among them, however, could claim the title of Harvey Houseboat – having lived on rivers all those years, or worked as a ranger in the heart of the natural splendor of Chatfield Hollow State park off of Route 80, or treasured Connecticut’s landscape from 10,000 feet in the two-seater aircraft he flew, looking for forest fires, and earning the moniker ​“Smokey the Bear in the Air”?

Even so, there are many in Connecticut, and in the environs of New Haven, who wouldn’t ask a question about his identity: They remember him well. They heard his music. And they listened to it at a time in their lives when, otherwise, they heard only melodies of despair.

But first a note about the date, Jan. 10. It was not Harvey’s birthday, and it was not his death day – the latter was May 22, 2017. Instead, the date was chosen by yours truly because we once had a rehearsal of our little jazz band that date, and Harvey, our leader, as always, had
something to say. Between each song, Harvey would usually regale us with a story from the old days. We understood. As the player of a brass instrument, he needed to rest his chops and his lungs, particularly in that he had been diagnosed with lung cancer.

He held in his memory a wealth of knowledge about music in our state, and the people who made it alongside him. Every summer, for example, he played in the George Manstan Big Band in free concerts at Chatfield Hollow, as families brought their picnics, and, and tapped their toes to American standards.

But Jan. 10. That day, Harvey said, he’d seen a little miracle, one that all of us had overlooked. In our collective haze about January, its interminable length, and the usual predictions that spring and its warmth and promise would never come to these frigid parts, Harvey had noticed ​“just a little” extra light in the sky, a promise of what was about to come our way, an end, eventually, to bone-shivering. That night we played, ​“Spring is Here,” and ​“It Might as Well be Spring,” but not ​“Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most,” and we felt renewed.

However, music is only the ornament and the trumpet only instrument of choice for Harvey Redak Day. What I have in my list under ​“Whereas” and ​“To Wit” is the real contribution of this marvelous man. His empathy, drawn from a great sense of frustration.

He had served long ago a sergeant in the Army, a bugler, and a member of the 43rd Division Band, and always proud of his service.

As the years passed, and as soldiers from the Vietnam War and later wars were buried in cemeteries around the state, Harvey became pained by the cutback of military funds as they relate to such sad occasions. Instead of paying for buglers or trumpeters to play ​“Taps” when those who gave the last measure of devotion were buried, the military began to rely on a poor substitute, a boom box that held a tape recording. Harvey could not abide this.

So whenever a Connecticut soldier or Marine was killed in Iraq or Afghanistan or some other duty station, Harvey put on his old sergeant’s uniform – it fit him perfectly all his adult life – and drove at his own expense to the funeral. With his white gloves, he honored each of the deceased. In all, Harvey played ​“Taps” in honor of more than 2,000 military personnel.

My Proclamation for Harvey Redak Day notes this, but it contains no mention of gratitude from the Pentagon, which, I believe, was embarrassed by Harvey’s extra measure of duty.

Funerals were not, by far, his only public service. For example, for 55 years he played the shofar at the Jewish High Holidays (most of them at Beth Shalom Rodfe Zedek in Chester). He often played, unpaid, for people whose spirits needed lifting. And when Harvey suffered from his own illness, he projected cheer and optimism. Yes, there was a part of him that understood his prognosis, but even in that darkness, he saw a little light. His wife, Justine Tobis, was always amazed by her husband’s positive outlook. And during that period I never saw him frown, except the one time during a Hanukkah celebration when he was a member of our klezmer band, and no one in the congregation had saved him a latke.

So my proclamation for Harvey Redak Day, Jan. 10, is the only such document that I know of that contains the words ​“To Wit,” and ​“Whereas” and ​“Where’s my latke?” It was the least we could have done for a man who fed the spirits of so many.