Peter Oppenheimer, was at his family summer house in Vermont this past summer in the middle of a conversation with his sister, when something inside him decided it was time to stop.1 He was seventy-one and still talking; his mind alive as ever, searching the world for connectivity and comparisons. Unless, of course, he was full of expletives about the incredible foolishness and waste in this world, comparing the little minds of Vermont or New Jersey with those of medieval France or Gibbon's Rome.
Either way, in the middle of his last sentence came the gestalt that the next correct word wouldn't make any difference, and that the RIGHT word was beyond any language whatever. Yet anyone who had changed the subject on Peter, knew his brain would instantly adjust its course without slowing, to do a mental inventory of the comparative literature on death, recalling someone he had met in his life who had described something similar. And in that long instant between sleep and wakefulness, in which many long layers of thought can be folded (for I know sections of Peter's bookcases), I am sure that Montaigne's essay on dying was scanned.... and discarded. Montaigne fell from his horse in full armor, was pronounced dead, carried home and laid out before his heart resumed slowly beating. He pulled out of his coma hours before the funeral and wrote about it. Realizing that Montaigne had already written about it, Peter would have opted out with an inaudible and inward sigh of relief.
Discussing this particular death of a scholar with my daughter, who teaches yoga and various things spiritual, she said it was a very odd situation for a soul to find itself in. That is, to stop in mid-conversation for no special reason. For it is quite common to end life in the mid-sentence due to a sharp surprise dealing the last blow such as a bullet, an accident, or a heart-attack delivers, but rarely simply by choosing to end the sentence with a comma
A period seeming unnecessary. Indeed, it seems a rare way to go. But what a wonderful situation for that soul, to come upon the window of timelessness, to be inevitably drawn out yet coming to grips with it, framing it in creative-thought.
I can only consider Peter still thinking, weaving connections between every branch of knowledge in the world; voraciously living through a thousand eyes of experience, captured in millions of pages of books, as many conundrums of existence as could be purchased, organized and stacked in every 5"x8", 6"x9", or 7"x10" space in his own house. And read. And remembered. For Peter was blessed, or perhaps cursed, with the phenomenal ability of the idiot savant who can riffle through a telephone book and recall every name and number. Only Peter was neither idiot nor savant, for he took little or no pride in what he could absorb, but compared everything he read to everything he experienced and found it all very interesting and curious. He saw through the eyes of authors and chewed, and digested, and drew life from it. For me, the phenomena of Peter Oppenheimer, was that he was from a world before Bacon though he took all knowledge as his province, he was not a man of science. We did not improve with knowledge. The importance of discovery, of new connections, new tools of thought, and the technologies we make of them, were moot. All eras of human life for him were equally impressive, curious, and depressing.
I met him in 1974 at the University of Pennsylvania, where he was an adjunct, teaching the history of philosophy of mathematics. He was a mathematician by training, but a philosopher by nature. He was the only person in the Philosophy Department that could engage the visiting Marxist scholar, Mihailo Markevic in his own territory. He was equally at home in ancient Greece, the Scottish Enlightenment, or the latest braids of thought in theoretical physics.
Peter was a unique breed of humankind, that turns up every century in a few places around the world. Residents of Princeton will remember him as the clerk at the old Witherspoon Bookstore, who would regale professors and students and bag-ladies alike with an odd quip about whatever book you had in your hand whether it was physics or Roman Law, turn-of-the-century Swedish politics, or the history of Missouri manufacturing. Peter led you to believe he had read nearly everything in the bookstore. To walk through Peter's three story house was through piles of books he had read. Up the stairs between piles, if any one title caught your eye, he would comment on it, and reach for a comparison text somewhere in another pile which it brought to mind. Any subject, every subject. The two bathrooms in the house were filled with forty years of Science Fiction.
He will undoubtedly be most missed by the Portuguese medical community for the years of labor and donated trips to Lisbon, as the book-keeper and secretary for a non-profit group devoted to developing graduate research work at their teaching hospital. The drain of good doctors to other countries was a detriment to their health care system. This was one of the only non-profits I ever ran across that was run on the assumption that its officers donated their time and expenses for the cause, though I imagine similar good hearts exist around the world. Beginning with two or three officer/administrators, with little or no operating expenses, they have raised millions and are now pioneering a long-neglected area of cancer research, with enough young doctors being able to stay in Lisbon. Peter has been their state-side aid, working from his little kitchen off of Nassau Street and taking the bus to Manhattan for meetings on his own nickel. This work kept Peter current with the computer age, staying up on the latest hardware and software, having to invent obscure modifications to allow him to keep his old DOS programs functional. Not without grumbling, of course.
Peter's other claim to socioeconomic engagement was his stint in the Peace Corps in Africa from its very first days during the Kennedy Administration. A friend of his from those days was another scholar, Paul Theroux, who has become much better known than Peter. Peter, was saved the effort of striving after an income by the Oppenheimer family business, a certain brand of adhesive wallpaper that took America by storm in the early 20th century. They were indeed a branch of the Vienna Oppenheimers, but one that branched off early in a pre-Napoleonic regime. He often mentioned he had a younger brother who used the patrimony in a very different way, for he was a rodeo rider who hee-hawed happily.
For all the knowledge and wisdom on Princeton's streets, they will not be the same without the obdurate humility, and a passion for learning the experience of others when Peter Oppenheimer walked the pavements of that town,
This was sent to the Princeton town newspaper as an obit shortly after his death, but was never printed and certainly needs to be. I carry him with me all the time so it might have been much earlier. OPPENHEIMER--Peter L., 71, of Princeton, N.J. on July 29, 2012. Friends and family may gather on Sunday, August 5th from 2-5pm at the Ethical Culture Society at 2 West 64th St., NYC. Published by New York Times on Aug. 3, 2012.
Thanks. Wish I had a better photo though
Love this ode to Peter!!