Alexander Bernstein Remembers His Father

My sister has said that his real ambition was to connect, in one way or another, with every person on the planet. For having lived only 72 years, he didn’t do a bad job of it. My father loved people and made love with multitudes. He never stopped learning. His appetite for knowledge and life was insatiable. Not only did he read constantly, but he would stay up all night with a group of students talking about music, love, and religion. He would drink them under the table and still be ready to rehearse at 10 a.m.

It's hard to believe that today is the 20th anniversary of Leonard Bernstein's death. Here's the rest of Alexander Bernstein's personal tribute to his father.

December 2023 UPDATE: I wish this article were still available as a link. You can find the above text here, but you will need to search through a pretty long text file (made in 2010/2011) to find it. I would suggest copying some of the above text and using the find command to search through the PDF. You can also find other interesting writing about Leonard Bernstein there.