His friends were great writers, but he was a wonderful family man

When my dad came home from World War II, he went to the University of Michigan on the GI Bill and got a great education.

Slote

He also made two lifelong friends, men who became very successful writers. Al Slote has written more than 30 books for young readers, and Josh Greenfeld has been an amazingly versatile writer, with movies, plays, novels and non-fiction books to his credit.

My dad was also a very talented writer, but he decided that if he wanted to have a wife and family, he couldn't afford to live the chancy life of a freelance writer. He went to work for the Air Force and spent his entire career working in the Pentagon.

Greenfeld

I never met Slote, but I came into contact with Greenfeld at least three or four times, the last in 1976 at Arena Stage in Washington, D.C., for a performance of his play about Dr. Martin Luther King, "I Have a Dream." Two years earlier, he had written the film "Harry and Tonto" for Paul Mazursky and had earned an Academy Award nomination.

He also wrote three non-fiction books about his autistic son Noah, one of which was named by the New York Time Review of Books as one of the 10 best non-fiction books of the year. He'll be 86 this year (my dad would have been 88) and he's still going strong. A week from this Sunday, there will be a staged reading of his new play, "Art and Gadg and Marilyn," by Theatre Palisades in Southern California.

The really amazing thing is that his son Karl has become a wonderful writer in his own right. He wrote for Time and Sports Illustrated for many years and has gone on to write wonderful books. His "Boy Alone" is a memoir about growing up with Noah. "Triburbia" is an outstanding novel about living in modern-day Manhattan, and just recently he co-wrote "Dr. J," Julius Erving's autobiography, with the basketball great.

I've got all three of those books in my library and I hope to read more of his work as well. As for his father's play, it's about Arthur Miller, Elia Kazan and Marilyn Monroe in the era of the blacklist and the HUAC hearings.

I'd love to see it. It's the first time since we left California in November 2010 that I found myself wishing we were still in Los Angeles.

Thinking about Josh also makes me think about my dad, who died in March 2008. My dad had a very good career and also worked very hard in the credit union movement.

He never had the time or opportunity to do much writing, which I always thought was something of a shame. I remember my mother telling me once that his two friends had told her he had been the best writer of the trio.

My parents

But I know one thing. He wouldn't have traded the life he had for anything he didn't do.

He was a family man in the best sense of the word, and that's why all of us who loved him will miss him for as long as we live.

It seems to me that's a pretty fair tradeoff.