But we knew some of the stories. How he met mom by falling asleep in the front row of her graduate seminar presentation at Berkeley, snoring with his mouth open, and then woke up at the end and asked the best questions about her talk, questions she couldn’t easily answer. And how she got a little of her own back because he was assigned to give the next week’s talk but had to call the professor afterwards and ask again what topic he had agreed to present, because he was still 70% asleep for the first conversation. How he proposed to mom on the second date but held off on the wedding until she finished some important exams. Dad said the two things that change your life most profoundly are marriage, and the birth of a child. Philip and I weren’t blessed with children of our own, but I agree with Cliff on that first one. He had nearly 60 years of marriage with Pam, and he was nuts about her. [He loved you so much, mom!] I hope I take after him. And not just on the sleeptalking. From our childhood, Mike and I always knew that he loved us. There was never a time we didn’t know.

 

Cliff was heavily influenced by his time at Berkeley. It was the height of the Free Speech Movement, and those principles really merged with his values. In his home office he had a picture of Malcolm X and a poster of the Bill of Rights with a red stamp overprint that said, “Void Where Prohibited by Law,” which he explained to young me was kind of a joke, except a joke that wasn’t actually very funny. He remembered hearing Joan Baez sing “We Shall Overcome” at a Berkeley student demonstration while marching up the circular staircase of an administration building tower and in telling it, he described transcendence. Perhaps this is why, in later years, he was stubborn with authority figures, difficult with cops, and the only person I ever knew to end an IRS audit with a balance in his favor.

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And arguing was for Cliff an aerobic exercise. We sat for family dinner every night, and whenever the talk became heated and the more conflict-averse of us raised an objection, we always knew to say, “We’re not arguing, we’re discussing!” But oh, Cliff loved to argue. He sometimes got so excited about the argument that, sensing victory was in his grasp, he would forget the point he started out arguing. But being reminded never took him back a step. He was simply having too much fun.Before we started those discussion-filled family suppers, we always said a prayer over the meal. And if Dad was leading the prayer, he always included a certain phrase. And this is why I would say, if Cliff Surko had a motto, it would be “Keep us ever mindful of the needs of others.” Because he said it all the time, and it was a heartfelt prayer. Later in life that mealtime phrase expanded, to include “both those we know personally and have concerns for, and the millions around the world we’ve never met who are suffering.” I never knew what natural disaster or act of warfare triggered the additional wording. It almost doesn’t matter. He always wanted to be reminded of those in need.

 

Cliff was crazy generous. Both Cliff and Pam have been very philanthropic. With Cliff especially, I remember him being involved with social outreach through our parish church in New Jersey. How there was a contingent within the church who wanted to see us get involved with helping the poor and homeless and hungry in the nearby inner cities. And how another resource urged us to look closer to home. “But there isn’t anyone to help close to home” some in the church opined. “We live in an upper-middle-class suburb. Everyone around us is, like us, comfortably well-off.” In fact, no, there were people locally, mostly elderly, literally starving to death as on limited fixed incomes they had to decide between heat, electricity and food. As a family we started volunteering with a local food bank that was always busy. To his final days, Cliff always made certain amounts of his financial giving in cash to those immediate to him for whom he saw the need. So remember, those in need are only just an arms’ length away.

 

And it must be said that Cliff was deeply religious. Raised Catholic, married Episcopal, he sincerely believed in God, and he didn’t subscribe to the assumption that you’re either a scientist or a religious believer but not both. Having said this, I don’t know much more about what Dad believed, because we never talked about it, even after I went to seminary. Now, in our family we’re not from an evangelical tradition. We’re from that branch of the Anglican church that, not for nothing they call us the Frozen Chosen! So, I feel obligated to say, even though we’re in a church today and Cliff found, and I as well find, this particular God Squad stuff deeply meaningful, that doesn’t make what we believe smarter or better or more right than whatever you yourself happen to believe, or not believe. For that matter, if you’re an atheist that’s cool too. Cliff was deeply respectful of other beliefs and not so cocksure as to believe we have it all right. But he knew that God gave him a big brain and he felt that he should probably use it.

 

Cliff’s systematic theology may have had something to do with the fact that there is so much matter and so little antimatter in our section of the universe, ‘cause annihilation happens when they get together, so how did we not all annihilate to maximum entropy? I dunno, that’s getting into that unknowable area. So guessing more than knowing, there may be something about an energy that maybe looks like love that sends out molecules to do what they want to do and see what happens next. And it may be my beliefs, more than Cliff’s, that say that dead Aristotelians go to a Platonic heaven, not hell, where perfect love and perfect data and perfect understanding and the answers to all our questions make all the noise of humanity quiet, such that everything becomes perfectly knowable, totally understandable – even each other, so perfect communication, perfect understanding, perfect sorrow, perfect repentance, perfect forgiveness, perfect love and complete contentment follow. I truly want to believe this, much as I recognize the evidence that says that old physicists never die, they just fall into a deeper sleep in department meetings.

 

Continuing with facts, Cliff was a marshmallow over his dogs. Let’s see, there was Poodle, and Russell, Taffy and Rufus (who was technically Mike’s dog, but came for a visit and wisely never left); there’s Jennifer, and Princess. I’m forgetting a few here. We always said that a Surko dog won the lottery in terms of getting absolutely spoiled by Cliff. He would relate canine misdeeds with a pride that grated on children with a teenage history of misdeeds not so well received. At the end of an evening, Cliff would curl up on the living room floor with a dog and repeat a cycle of crinkling the ear, shaking the head, and then thumping enthusiastically on the side, all while telling them they’re not such a bad dog after all. Prior to introducing any new dog of ours to Cliff we had to pre-crinkle-shake-thump them to prepare them. I can remember Marlow seated by Dad and looking at me as if to say, “I’m a little seasick but he seems like a nice man.” And in our family, if Dad liked you, he teased you. So his highest abusive accolades were reserved for Paton dogs, who in recent years have all been golden retrievers. “Dumber than a bag of hammers” is one quote, “dumber than a bag of hair” another. Cliff’s marshmallow nature and disdain for golden retrievers compiled the necessary foundation for the infamous family practical joke that was the Doggie DNA Test. Also known as the day Mike doubled his inheritance. And if you haven’t heard the story of the Doggie DNA Test, … you might be at the wrong memorial service?

 

...But look, they say speak no evil of the dead, but they don’t say to be dishonest. We have Aristotelians inna house, and the truth is very much self-evident: there were things Cliff was just plain NOT good at. And to gloss these over is to imply conclusions not substantiated by the data. Two points in particular occurred frequently enough not to be outliers:

 

For one, Cliff had NO musical talent. His A Capella version of “Reveille”, or one-half verse of “Onward Christian Soldiers,” could raise even the most somnolent sulky teen from between the bedsheets and have them sprinting to the shower before the cross of Jesus had even entered the battlefield. He was tone deaf, and loud. This is particularly painful since both Pam and Mike have a great deal of musical talent. One of the funnier jokes in family history was when my loving husband Phil, in the furtherance of family merriment, asked what amount of money Cliff would have to give to Julliard in order to be granted an honorary doctorate in Music. The look on mom’s face was priceless.

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Musical contributions aside, Clifford Michael Surko had another, profound and irreparable flaw. I love my father, but the man could NOT tell a joke. Cliff would start chortling even before he made it through the premise! And it went downhill from there. Now, the absent-minded Professor would drift off into silence during ordinary conversation, that was nothing new. But thinking while holding back laughter just made him worse. His body would get these hiccups, his face would start to turn red, he’d start rocking. Sentence 2 would take forever! Cliff’s voice would get higher and higher, his speech would become unintelligible, and his face would dissolve until all that was left was the Cheshire Cat’s toothy smile. Practically sobbing at this point, he’d have to repeat the punch line several times so that someone closest could guess and interpret. And he’d be so proud that everyone was laughing at this point, not as much at the joke as at his attempt to tell it.

 

When Dad called me to tell me he’d been diagnosed with aggressive cancer, I didn’t initially contextualize his introductory words. He’d reached me while I was wandering through a hypermarket in the South of France, trying to find my way out of the Rosé department. I could hear the emotion in his voice. After telling him how sorry I was, how incredibly unfair this felt, I was drawn to his concerns and wishes for the time he had left, and what I could do to help, which he wanted to talk about. Cliff’s first concern was my mother, big picture plans. Yeah Dad, makes sense, I can help, no problem. His second concern was also my mother, this time logistical/practical support concerns. Got it, yeah, okay. And his third concern was his research group, because good people had entrusted their careers to his leadership, and he wanted to be sure that they had the chance to complete their good work and succeed to the future positions of leadership and influence that they merited. There was no bucket list. Cliff Surko himself wasn’t on the list. He spent his last days nominating other people for awards. The closest thing to a guilty pleasure was falling asleep in the sun with a Mick Herron book.

 

So when he said to me, on the phone in that supermarket, “I’m not sure how this is gonna go. I’ve never done this before,” I took it as a statement of the uncertainty of coping with threatening cancer, because that was my experience with the disease. How there are so many if/thens and variables that you can’t predict day to day what you’ll be experiencing or how you’ll be feeling or how functional you are. So that is how I understood him at the time. It wasn’t until much later that I began to hear those words, that sunk into my brain, in an entirely different way, and wondered how he intended them.

 

“I’ve never done this before.” This is an experimental physicist talking. His entire career is building and perfecting the equipment required to isolate, and then study, highly uncommon and ephemeral phenomena. Pretty much everything Cliff did started with something he’d never done before. And yet, it’s the first time I ever heard him make such a statement. What if he wasn’t talking about undergoing treatment for esophageal cancer, or moving into a senior living facility with skilled nursing, or making arrangements for a research group to continue without him? If instead he was talking about dying?

 

But none of us has done this before! Unless you’re that guy.

 

We all die, we all go to the next life uncertain and inexperienced, with incomplete and not entirely reliable data.So as I pay tribute to a man I loved and admired, Clifford Surko who was my father, I am grateful that he was my dad. He was a good scientist, crazy smart. He lived some exceptionally good values, and I’m proud that some of those are now my values. He had personal strengths, and when I showed too much of one of those personal strengths, then I became my mother’s child.

 

And if you would join me in honoring Cliff Surko today, may I suggest a protocol: do your very best work, whether you’re a great physicist, a great physicist in the making, whether you’ll never be a physicist, or you’ll never do physics again. Do that other thing and do your very best at it. SIDEBAR.

 

Nothing would have made him happier in life. I think more so now.

 

Argue with someone who enjoys a good ‘discussion’, remember someone who is less fortunate, pet a dog, laugh hard at your own jokes. If you’re really, really good at it, sing to a family member. Sit in the sun, read a book that makes you snort through your nose, eat fried food, nap. None of us knows how this is gonna go. We’ve none of us done this before. But we can hope it has a great legacy such as this one, and reasonably hypothesize that it ends well, in love. Amen.