Robert Paul Kalish

Background/Education

Robert Kalish was born on November 30, 1946, in The Bronx, New York, to Evelyn and Philip Kalish. His sister Wendy was born several years later. Around 1954, the family move to Franconia Village, one of the first co-operative housing developments in Flushing, Queens.

Robert went to P.S. 24, JHS 189, and Flushing H.S.

He attended Queens College for a year and then transferred to The City College of New York (CCNY) to the School of Architecture. He used to say that he did so because he kept failing Spanish at Queens College and the Architecture program had no language requirement.

While at CCNY, in the 1960s, he edited Tech News and other publications. He became the driving force for the accreditation of The School of Architecture, and left behind an archive of notes and documents on the history of the architecture department. A young architecture alumnus tried to contact Robert two years ago. He had found Robert’s archived notes and the edited news publications and was using them to write a book. Subsequently, Robert was recently honored by The Alumni Association of CCNY and was awarded a medal by The School of Architecture Alumni for his work and contributions to the school.

While at CCNY, Robert studied oil painting under the mentorship of then professor

Charles Henry Alston, a Black American artist who is well-known for his paintings and sculptures Robert became an accomplished painter; he produced a body of work of oils, lithographs, and clay tiles, often employing found objects.

He graduated with two degrees in architecture and went on to receive a Masters degree in architecture from Pratt Institute. His degrees were an equivalent of a doctorate.

Career

Initially Robert was to work at The City Planning Commission but his position lost funding before he could even begin. Despite his father’s dismay at his not wanting to take over his father’s accounting business, Robert wholeheartedly went into teaching. During this time he continued to serve the city. He was active with Councilwoman, Julia Harrison, of Flushing and produced plans for a Flushing travel hub and other civic projects.

Robert taught science in the New York City school system for over thirty years. He was well-known and well-loved as a teacher who had an incredible, unique ability to impart information.

Robert was an innovator in the classroom: he created masterful lessons with unparalleled equipment and demonstrations, always with a touch of humor and great finesse. During lessons and experiments, he shared his love of classical music: He’d play it in the foreground, and in the background, to emphasize and enhance whatever he was teaching. He produced not only pre-med majors but music majors. He produced books of lessons, which were magnificently presented, clear, precise, using his architectonic abilities to construct beautifully designed graphic presentations. He never used a text book, he had the class “make” their own from articles, demonstrations, videos. Some students never let go of those notebooks.

He brought his knowledge to other teachers and did demonstrations at The Science Technical Assistance Center. His demonstrations were produced on Blue-ray discs. He worked Saturdays in a program at Long Island University teaching gifted elementary school kids advanced science.

Robert retired and continued working for ten more years at The Kew Forest School in Forest Hills, Queens, and also taught at various Yeshivas until 2014.

Personal

In addition to his other talents, Robert was: a graphic artist and photographer.

He sang.

He wrote poetry.

He was a card-carrying member of The Gustav Mahler Society, and son, Evan, who also had an appreciation of great music, because of Robert, went into Manhattan annually to celebrate Mahler’s birthday with other members in a restaurant.

Robert played the guitar, the 5-string banjo, and was teaching himself the concertina.

It seemed like there was nothing Robert couldn’t do, and perhaps that was true. People thought he knew everything, he was a font of knowledge, he had an amazing, renaissance-array of abilities and interests, and created endless amounts of collections.

One of his collections was of postmarks which Evan inherited and he has picked up where his father left off: trying to amass a postmark from every post office in the country.

Robert met Susan through his first wife Judy in the late 1960s. Robert got divorced. Susan and her then husband, bought a co-op in Flushing Queens, not far from where Robert lived. Susan’s husband was ill and died and yadda yadda, the rest is history.

They married in 1976. They were both teachers and used the summers for extensive travels. Robert’s knowledge of maps and cities and the ability to envision places and surroundings, brought forth the most amazing trips. He could pick the best hotel, the best room for the best view. He combed the Michelin Guides for the best restaurants because, you see, Robert loved food. Good food, ethnic food, Any food.

With prescience, they decided they would take their “retirement” when they were young, when they “could do it,” and put off having children. Summer travels brought them to Canada, and, nine summers in Europe where they explored hill towns and the places that tourists would never consider, as well as the usual big cities: their fantasy was to retire in Orvieto, Italy, a place they knew well and visited several times. That never happened. But, they amassed about 30,000 slides.

Both had photography in common and virtually the same eye for composition.

After all of that traveling and eating and going and doing, Evan Kalish was born in 1986. Robert adored him. He was always teaching him, showing him and sharing music. He worked after retirement to put Evan through two Ivy-League degrees.

Around 2014, possibly before, Robert had begun to exhibit issues with walking. Issues with balance. There were changes in behavior, judgment, subtle changes that likely had begun even earlier, and by 2016 after an 18 month misdiagnosis, a young neurologist at Weil Cornell found he had hydrocephalus, a treatable dementia, and recommended a brain shunt. This worked for a while but then began to fail: Something else was going on which was rapidly progressing. There was never a definitive diagnosis: Parkinson’s? Alzheimers? These are umbrella terms for an undefinable illness. An illness that was slowly robbing Robert of his ability to stand, then his ability to walk, then his ability to move. He was trapped.

His muscles would not obey him. His ability to communicate waned. He was diminished to yes/no responses and then went silent.

In November 2020, the day before his 74th birthday, he fell in the house and sustained a head injury; he was sent to the hospital, but because of Covid and the lack of beds, after 3 days in The ER he was triaged, at The Grand Rehab and Nursing. There, he fell out of bed several times sustaining head injuries, and was sent back to the hospital. But wait! Now he had Covid! He was triaged at The Hebrew Home in Riverdale, The Bronx. Weeks later, In the March of 2021, he was returned to The Grand. He was unrecognizable to the staff.

It was there that he stayed and lived out the rest of his days, for thirty-eight months, bedridden, contorted, unable to make a call, to initiate a conversation, to call for help, or to engage with other people. He was now seventy-seven years old. It was 2024. There were no New Year’s resolutions, and no promise of a future or a good meal.

How did Susan know the end was near? He no longer knew what Orvieto was.

Then he went silent.

And then he went.

It was January 18th, 2024. He was finally at rest, but, before he left, he found a Michelin Guide to the best cloud in heaven.

A graveside service for Robert Paul Kalish will be held Monday, January 22, 2024 from 1:00 PM to 2:00 PM at Flushing Cemetery, located at 163-6 46th Ave, Flushing, NY 11358.