Richard Burg Adelman

He was the father of Ben Adelman (husband of Evangeline) of Topsfield; Hannah (Adelman) Menzer (wife of Eric) of Topsfield; Sarah (Adelman) Gabel (wife of Ryan) of Lebanon, N.H.; and Eli Adelman (husband of Elizabeth) of Spring Hill, Tenn.; grandfather of Abe, Alaina, Jacob, Zack, Carrie, Elliott, Elliana, Eleanor and Ezra; brother of David Adelman of North Kingstown, R.I., and Judith Ballentine (wife of Larry) of Harwich; uncle of Jamie (Ballantine) O’Donnell and Jessie Ballantine; ex-husband of Merril (Chase) Allen of Boxford; longtime companion of Trudi Perry of Topsfield; and son of the late Elliott and Barbara Adelman of Swampscott.

Richard grew up in Marblehead and attended Marblehead High. His curiosity sparked a diverse arc of life experiences. As a teenager he competed in crew through the Sea Scouts and sailed on the schooner Shenandoah. He competed in weightlifting through the YMCA. He coached youth football. As a young man he worked in his grandfather’s textile factory, A.S. Burg Co., where he was burned from the waist up saving co-workers in a chemical fire. He attended Arizona Western College in Yuma and graduated from Colorado State University, Fort Collins, with a bachelor’s in social science in 1970. While out west, the Jewish kid from Marblehead discovered a love for rodeos. He bought a Hancock quarter horse named Buck and competed in team-roping competitions. He clung to the backs of bucking bulls and broncs and tried to stay on for 8 seconds.

In college he met Merril Chase of Stockton, Calif. He was a horse shoer, and her horse needed shoes. They married in 1970 and started the first chapter of their adult lives together. He earned a Master of Arts in Teaching political science and history at Salem State and taught sociology at the junior college at Essex Agricultural and Technical Institute in Hathorne. The college was new, and many of Professor Adelman’s students were close to him in age, some recently returned from the Vietnam War. Richard became part of a close-knit community at the small professional training college. Later he claimed to have loved his job so much that he never wanted to take a day off. During his 45-year career teaching at the Aggie and later North Shore Community College, Richard’s love of the profession endured. Battling dementia in retirement, he continued to reminisce.

In October 1974, Richard and Merril bought the Alfalfa Farm in Topsfield, known for its two hulking silos beside Route 95. Owning a historic dairy led to a number of entrepreneurial pursuits. They raised beef cattle and eventually donated their herd of Polled Herefords to Essex Aggie, now Essex Tech. Students still show descendents of that herd each year at the Topsfield Fair. Richard ran a business boarding horses that raced at Suffolk Downs. In 1996, Richard and Merril planted grapevines and, together with Richard’s brother and sister, started Alfalfa Farm Winery, a business that continues today.

Richard and Merril moved to Boxford in 1978. They divorced in 2001 and he moved into an apartment at the farm, which became the center of many family gatherings. He loved taking his children out to eat, visiting Salem Willows and leading the kids and grandkids on “Camp Warthog” adventures. His sense of humor was off-color and irreverent. He raised his children on a steady diet of dirty jokes and Mel Brooks movies. His children often recount his pithy quotes: “If I don’t see you through the week, I’ll see you through the window”; “If you work you get paid”; and his cure for most ailments: “Did you poop?”

Richard was a lifelong lover of music. He was a drummer in several North Shore bands, including Green Change, Side Street, and most notably, Jumpin’ George and the Blue Lights, which played a standing weekly gig at the Horseshoe Lounge in North Reading for seven years. He spent time with folk icon Tom Rush in the 1970s and early ‘80s. He loved Little Feat, Paul Simon, and Warren Zevon’s “Lawyers, Guns and Money.” He was a Red Sox fan and drove a ‘55 Chevy Bel Air, occasionally visiting car shows.

Richard took courses in video production at Boston FIlm and Video Foundation in the early ‘80s. In 1984 he and Merril traveled with a team to Haiti to document social conditions. They produced the film “Haiti – A Closer Look.” He formed Full Moon Productions and documented the effects of the Holocaust on modern-day Jews in an 85-minute film called “Present Memory” in 1989. The filmmakers interviewed such notables as Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz and Israeli politician Rabbi Meir Kahane, as well as “average” Jewish Americans. According to Variety, the point of the film was “to raise – but not answer – the question of what it means to be a Jew in America.”

Richard was a member of the Holocaust Committee of the Jewish Federation of the North Shore; the New England Producers’ Association; the American Film Institute; Boston Film and Video Foundation; the American Sociological Association; the National Association of Forensic Counselors; the Brandeis University Clubs; and the North Shore Old Car Club. Last year, he and Trudi Perry earned an Essex County Farm Bureau award for Outstanding Membership. In 2019, North Shore Community College conferred upon him the title of Professor Emeritus. He earned an Endowment Fund award from the Holocaust Center North Shore; a Certificate of Achievement from the Essex Conservation District; a Certificate of Recognition for 10 years participating in service-learning at North Shore Community College; and was honored by the Holocaust Center in 1996 for his work as a filmmaker and educator “whose courage and dedication inspire young minds to be human and caring and whose commitment and determination help create a better tomorrow.”

Richard was an analytical thinker who pursued knowledge throughout his life and instilled in his students and his children the crucial habit of independent thought. Friends and associates recall him fondly as a generous and compassionate person who made them feel at home on his farm.

A funeral service for Richard will be held on Friday, March 31, 10 a.m. at Stanetsky-Hymanson Memorial Chapel, 10 Vinnin St., Salem, with interment at Congregation Shirat Hayam Cemetery, 506 Lowell Street, Peabody. Shiva will be held at the Alfalfa Farm Winery, 267 Rowley Bridge Road, Topsfield immediately after the burial until 4 p.m. and Sunday, April 2, 10 a.m. to 1 p.m.

In lieu of flowers, expressions of sympathy may be made in his memory to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 100 Raoul Wallenberg Place, SW, Washington, D.C. 20024-2126.