Remembering Allan Brownfeld

My father, Allan Brownfeld, passed away on 4 August at the age of 85 in Virginia. He was sharp until the end, spending time with his children and asking about his grandchildren. He was following current events and regretted that he did not have the energy to complete some outstanding writing projects.

There is an Italian expression for someone who has found success: “He found his America.” My father’s grandparents came from Lithuania and Poland. They immigrated from there to New Jersey and New York. And it was there that they found their America. They left behind the challenges of living as Jews in poor and undemocratic places. They embraced a country that even with its many flaws gave them the opportunity to thrive. They translated their initial success in blue-collar professions into the encouragement (and insistence) that their kids pursue higher education. For Allan, this meant he had the opportunity to go to college and launch a career rooted in his passion for politics and ideas.

My father grew up in Brooklyn on a street of immigrants from all over Europe. He had some memories of World War II, when there were parades at the end of the war and his uncles came home from Europe and Japan. He made lifelong friends in middle school. He did not attend synagogue regularly, but he did his Bar Mitzvah, surrounded by aunts, uncles, and cousins. He had fond memories of his high school, Erasmus Hall, and regularly attended class reunions. He succeeded in history and English, and squeaked by in math and science. As a teenager, he became interested in the Council and politics.

At age 17, he left New York for the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, VA. He spent four years living at Monroe Hall, and during this time he learned how to swim and to drive. These were his greatest challenges in college. Notwithstanding his many summers at camp in New England, he remained unable to swim. He recalled that when he finally surpassed the test, the class erupted in applause. As he applied for his driver’s license, the requirement to parallel park—which he found unnecessary in largely rural Virginia—stymied him. He had weekly appointments with a state policemen, who came to Williamsburg to conduct the test, and who failed my father multiple times. Eventually the kindly officer gave Allan specific instructions on when to turn and when he was making a mistake so that he could finally get his license.  

He became involved in student politics and the student newspaper. In the early 1960s in Virginia, he found himself in a very different environment with growing tension around race relations. Proud to have invited the first black speaker to William and Mary, he drew a rebuke from the College President, who told young Allan: “I thought you were a conservative.” To which he replied, “Racism isn’t something I want to conserve.”

During this time, my father remained involved in the Council, and he recounted stories of driving across the country with friends and visiting its members.

Upon graduation, Allan enrolled in Georgetown Law, but the pull of William and Mary was too strong, and he instead decided to spend three more years in Williamsburg at the Marshall-Wythe Law School. Williamsburg would remain a meaningful place to him for the rest of his life. It was the destination of many family trips, and became the alma mater of my brother and sister. My father was delighted when they each married fellow graduates of the College.

After law school, he did finally move to the Washington area, first living on Capitol Hill and then settling in Old Town Alexandria, which had the familiar colonial feel of Williamsburg.

He immersed himself in Washington politics, working in Congress, writing for a range of publications, and lecturing across the country. He identified most strongly with the fathers of conservatism—Edmund Burke (for whom my brother got his name), Russell Kirk, and Milton Friedman. He believed that America’s core strength was the vision of its Founding Fathers enshrined in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

Allan married Solveig Eggerz, a native of Iceland with whom he had three children: my sister Ali, myself, and my brother Burke. He attended all of our sports events, and we had a habit of walking to King Street for lunch on Saturdays. Always curious to get to know our friends, my father was eager to learn their thoughts about politics and engage them in debate. He relished spending time with his six grandchildren. He would read to them for hours on end when they were sick and would even do so over the computer for those who did not live nearby.

My father was an eternal optimist about America. He acknowledged that America had made  grave errors—slavery, racism, treatment of Native Americans, Vietnam, Watergate—but he thought of America as a resilient nation. He noted that no one in Virginia in the 1960s would have thought America would elect a black president, and yet it did.

In his last days and weeks, he was following politics and world events. Although he was very critical of the phase of politics that our country is currently in, he said, “I am an optimist. I am confident about the future of America.”