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JEN
3/10
2005
46
To t h
March 1-April 22
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A
eMaX
few hours after the visionary Max
Fisher passed away on March 3,
Jewish Federation of Metropolitan
Detroit's CEO Bob Aronson called a staff
meeting in the first-floor conference room.
Max's benevolent smile from a large por-
trait on the wall of the Max M.
Fisher Federation Building in
Bloomfield Township greeted
some 45 staff members as they trickled in.
Aronson wanted to tell the staff how dev-
astating this loss was, how the news media
onslaught would soon begin, and what was
expected of them in
the coming days.
He wanted to tell
them.
He just couldn't.
"This is a difficult
day for us . . . I can't
do this," was all
Aronson could manage
to say before he sum-
HARRY
moned
Howard
KIRSBAUM
Neistein,
Federation's
Columnist
chief planning officer,
to speak on his behalf.
Twenty minutes later, Aronson sat in the
executive conference room, staring at a list
of news organizations wanting a comment.
He knew he had to talk now.
His comments to me were part practice,
part therapy.
"He was the man who presidents and
prime ministers and world leaders of all kinds
came to," he said. "The world Jewish com-
munity came to him over and over again dur-
ing the course of his long and illustrious life."
Aronson would speak with Max about once
a week, and the relationship grew over time.
"It took me a while to win over his confi-
dence because I was the new kid on the
block, and I came here and knew this giant
of a man lived here, and I better get to
know this guy and develop a relationship
with him," Aronson said. "It was the greatest
relationship I've had.
"He was unbelievably loyal to his friends
and larger than life," Aronson said. "He
knew that he had the influence and the
power, but he used it judiciously, he used it
strategically, he never put himself first.
"I don't think there was a more important
player in the entire Jewish world than Max
Fisher during the second half of the 20th cen-
tury," Aronson said. "He was the most effective
convener, power broker and facilitator behind
the scenes there ever was for our people.
"Whenever anything really big needed to
get done, whether it was in the city, whether
it was in the Jewish world, people would
seek the counsel of Max Fisher," he said.
"Whenever you got done seeing Max, even
though he didn't often use a lot of words in
a conversation, you always had
a new sense of direction and
purpose.
"He was a wise man. He spoke often
about the importance of leadership and
commitment to your community," he said. "If
we can emulate him and model ourselves
after him as a community and as individuals,
then in my view we will carry on for Max."
Last Call
My Max Chat
When "The Max" — the Max M. Fisher Music
Center — opened in Detroit last October, I
finally got my shot at speaking with him. I had
only met him a couple of times before, and he
rarely gave more than a one-sentence com-
ment when I called about a story.
JN Editor Bob Sklar and I sat down with
Max on a beautiful day in his study. The
phone sat next to him on a table, next to a
bulging phone book.
I could only imagine what names were in
that book. I wondered if he had the White
House private number written in pen and
the president's name in pencil. I obsessed
on the phone book until Max began to
speak. Then Bob and I hung on his every
word, a fact backed up by the picture on
page 5 of today's JN.
Max talked about the Max, the future of
the city of Detroit, the Middle East and
tikkun olam, repairing the world.
At the end of the one-hour conversation,
I shook his hand and told him that I rooted
for his alma mater, Ohio State University,
when they won the NCAA national football
championship in 2002 because of him, and
that should mean a lot because I'm a
Michigan State University alumnus.
He laughed.
The last time I spoke with Max was for a
comment about his nephew, Stephen Ross,
who donated $100 million to the University
of Michigan School of Business in Ann Arbor.
Before I hung up, Max thanked me for doing
a good job and being a "fine young man."
You never forget a compliment from a
man like him. IVF
Harry Kirsbaum's e-mail address is
hkirsbaum@thejewishnews.com