Alan Zachary Ullman

Alan and Beth are proof that you don’t have to share blood to be family. We became friends at Stanford Hill over 50 years ago. However, we reconnected in the fall of 1971 when powered and I went to Macy’s to exchange a wedding gift. As we were going up the up escalator, Alan and Beth were coming down the escalator. We discovered that we were neighbors living just a block apart between Tasso Street and Palo Alto Avenue. This started a tradition of sharing whatever meals we had on the stove we would combine, and we’d visit each other‘s houses and Mandy and boots got to be friends. Then Alan and Beth moved to Berkeley and we still remain friends. Then they moved to Los Angeles, and we stayed in touch the extra twist of course was that Howard‘s parents been in Elaine and Ben also adopted Alan and Beth and became surrogate grandparents for Michael when he came along. They have always been more family than friends and thinking of that friendship being cut in half is incredibly painful, pretty unbelievable. In fact I know Alan has had health problems in the last several years, but I look forward to those unexpected but expected phone calls from him where we would talk about his work with indivisible or his slant on the world or his update on how Michael and Tommy and Carina are doing. We’ve shared bar and bat mitzvahs, weddings, the birthday parties, the anniversaries, and Chinese banquets. Even more special are the times when we would just times when we Would just drop by to find that Alan had baked something for us half an hour before we arrived. He was an incredibly special person (It’s uncomfortable to use the past tense.) He is still deep in our hearts, and all of our love is for Beth at this time and whatever you need for us, Beth, you know you’ve got us. It was Russian that brought me from Smith College to Stanford to study and when I was in college, we had to memorize a poem by the Russian poet, Simeonov and it just pounds through my head at this point. (I am posting it as a separate tribute on this website.) While there is honor in acknowledging family ties, I think that friendship is more powerful. When there's a shared blood relationship you have to be in touch you have to have a relationship but our friendship is built out of the small moments a times of connection when you are not planning to connect but when you do it feels like you just left each other two minutes ago that you know so many things about each other's family and sense of humor and life and you share that and you share that when members of the family are gone and you still share those connections so whether that means remembering Nedra and her red hair and and bring the way Ben and Elaine interacted with the Ullman family and even though those connections are still not there they matter and they continue to give us meaning. We hear the echo of their voices in our heart, even though they are physically not here with us anymore. Love always, Laura