When I first met Dr. Martin E. Glasser (Marty) I was a very young man of 13. My parents were in the middle of a shockingly nasty divorce. My sister and I were pawns in a battle of two vastly different philosophies of parenting. The court in Alameda County set out to try to ensure that Suzi and I both had someone who could be in our corner, a voice of reason to drown out the angry voices of our parents.
The divorce itself was a predictable surprise. In 1958, a New York Jewish mother sought to rescue a poor little oppressed German holocaust survivor she met on a Jewish singles weekend in Tilden Park and help him grow into the man which his charming personality suggested might have been a possibility.
Fast Forward. 1980: My parents had been arguing for most of my young life - I hardly remember a time when it seemed they weren't at each other. For my father it was the incompatibility of being a free spirit that his inner child demanded of him and the responsibility that comes with being in a committed marriage with children.
ASIDE: In an odd twist of conformational bias, my sister revealed to me, on a 2015 trip we took to visit him in Germany that our father, could he pick any age to have stayed for all eternity, would have been six. Apparently he felt this was the age of freedom for him with not a care in the world and no responsibilities. To myself I simply reflected: "Of Course!" After all, a six year old has no idea how many other's lives are caught up in making their experience carefree ...
So, I would take the BART to San Francisco. I would climb on the N Judah and make my way to UCSF. I would arrive to find my personal sanctuary. 500 hours later, in an off and on again journey that had both of us wind up in San Diego, my regular visits would end. That period of time was invaluable to shaping the person I am today.
Marty was very special. I knew this almost from the moment I met him.
As a young man I had this idea that I wanted to be a trauma surgeon. I connected with Marty on this topic early on. I learned that he had at one time been a trauma surgeon.
Marty's story went like this: It was the time of the Vietnam War and he wanted to go to medical school but was worried about the draft. So, he chose to join the Navy as a doctor. In exchange they agreed to pay for his medical school for service future service. He trained as a trauma surgeon and went off to what he had expected to be an 18 month stint on a Haven-class hospital ship.
Marty had miscalculated. Indeed, many Navy surgeons did work on hospital ships like the USS Repose (AH-16), this was not in the cards for Marty. Instead he was assigned to the Marine base at Khe Sanh. He experienced constant incoming mortar fire.
Lt. Cdr. Glasser went out on more than one reconnaissance mission with the 3rd Marine Division. He served as a physician to many Vietnamese hospitals, clinics and villages. This assignment was also especially dangerous, since many of these village destinations were also in enemy territory of the Viet-cong.
Marty told me stories of how these things had changed him. Changed what he wanted to heal. He went back to UCLA to obtain a new medical certification. Having “seen enough trauma of the body” to last him a lifetime he once told me, he chose to now work on the trauma of the mind. What better way to help humanity than to work with children, young adults, and veterans on their experiences so they would not necessarily need to relive and drag out traumas of their minds for their entire lives.
I know that he helped shape me. Our many conversations were at times comforting and at times challenging. He confronted me directly on topics that allowed me to square away my relationship with my parents. He directly asked why I had never sought out my birth parents? Wasn't I disappointed with my adoptive mother and father? Did I have fantasies that my "real" parents were wealthy and happy and just waiting for me to find them?
We spent many hours on parents, and parenting. What makes a parent? Is it genetic or is it simply intention to play the role? For a teenager these are important things to discuss and think about. In the end, my sense of parent is the person who choses this responsibility and plays that role in your life. It clearly doesn’t need to be genetic.
How did I feel about my father's cheating on my mother? What? He did that? Yes, as my father would confess to me later, he did. How did I feel about my mother’s hostility towards men in general? So many issues.
How did I feel about my father's drug use? How did I feel about my mother's anger issues? How did I feel about all the secrets in my family? How could I make sure that I built a life for myself where I avoided creating hurt and bad feelings for the people I cared about? So many questions.
He helped me develop a system of disclosure and principles that would help me construct a life for myself that would be different from my parents. It allowed me to see, correctly, that teenagers need structure and rules -even if that is not comfortable. Marty helped me appreciate the value of living one's life as an open book. Secrets, he helped me see, eat and destroy us from the inside out. He pressed the value of just trying to be honest in every moment; and, to try to avoid doing things that would require secrets be kept.
Marty was there to listen, to challenge, and to discuss. He was there to help me grow. He was a father to me in place of the one who could not, for his own history of trauma, play that role.
In 2014 I had a wonderful discussion with him. I had no idea it would be my last. You never really think your heroes are going to die. My discovery in late 2015 of his obituary -as I thought to give him another call and thank him for the toolkit he gave me to deal with the events of that week and the coming time ahead- was an unexpected and profound loss. In a weird way, in Marty’s passing, I lost my non-biological father.
Marty, sitting here in 2021 thinking about you again. Thanks for everything.
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