"In all the bright stories of legislators winning spurs and moving up there is none in this or recent sessions that better illustrates how grasp of problems and aggressiveness in meeting them sends a man from the rear row to the chief aisle seat than that of the Chairman of the House Appropriations Committee. Six years ago Herbert B. Cohen sat in the rear rank of the the slim Democratic delegation in the lower branch of the Assembly. He had an ability as a speaker rouser and fight starter seldom seen even in that training place of lawmakers and legislative leaders. Now he is Chairman of the most powerful House Committee and spokesman for the Administration, the ruling group in the House, and himself."



My Presidential Grandfather was born on July 2, 1900 in York, Pennsylvania — first capital of the United States of America. Against all odds, he rapidly became the popular, charismatic leader of the Pennsylvania Democrats, transforming the swing state of Pennsylvania and impacting national politics in the 20th Century. There are over a thousand news articles covering his career. Herbert Cohen gained national fame in his twenties as the public defender of John Blymire in the ‘Hex Murder’ trial, one of the most sensational and widely discussed cases of the time. From his early 30s to age 56, he was a leading Pennsylvania Democratic Politician as Pennsylvania House Majority Leader for multiple terms and as Pennsylvania Attorney General. At 56, he moved to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court until his sudden death from a heart attack in 1970. In 1956, he and another judge had humbly flipped a coin for the "Chief Justice" role. In 1970, had he not died, he would of been Chief Justice on the PA Supreme Court — as stated by Lavere Senft in his eulogy. In December 1970, at age 70, he had a heart attack in the middle of the night — when I was eight years old — several hours after he and my grandmother had dined at a Philadelphia restaurant. Although he was athletically talented and played golf often, he had smoked heavily in early adulthood, which probably led to his heart attack decades later. Although, perhaps Nixon and Hoover had him poisoned at the restaurant with shellfish toxin. Someone should investigate that.

Not his protégé, George Leader — and every Democrat in power since Herbert Cohen's time — including past Governor Tom Wolf, current Governor Josh Shapiro, past Senator Bob Casey, and current Senator John Fetterman — benefited from Herbert Cohen's remarkable courage and leadership in transforming Pennsylvania's political landscape. He achieved this as a Jewish Man, not religious, but proudly Jewish, and proudly American. He achieved this without being wealthy — Herbert Cohen attended college on a Navy Scholarship — and he consistently rose above anti-Semitic, false, Jew-baiting attacks motivated by crude envy — including from some less talented — but more narcissistic and grandiose — Democrats.

Overcoming entrenched anti-Semitic bigotry, he rose up to become a visionary and respected political leader. He was both a small town populist and a political powerhouse whose goal was always to empower "the people" economically and through education. He was not a fake populist, like fake left- and right wing, wealthy, educated supposed "anti-elites" who praise the "ordinary people" and "workers," loudly ensure that they have basic necessities and job security — but do nothing to empower them to no longer be the "ordinary people" and "workers" on the totem pole.

The "founders" of American Democracy were the intellectual and cultural "elite" of their time. Jefferson, Hamilton, Adams, Madison, Franklin and James Smith, from York, PA, were highly educated, enlightened, and envisioned an enlightened and educated society, not a nation of fake populist leaders in gilded mansions who praise the "ordinary folk" and "workers" and tell them that how cool they are for spending their wages on sports and entertainment rather than going to college like the "elites."

My grandfather did not sell people on that sort of horse-sh-t. His focus was to empower every individual to climb the success ladder.

Here is an excerpt from Henry Leader's eulogy: "Herbert Cohen was not a man who valued sham or pretense. In fact, to the contrary, one of his favorites was to put down, prick the balloons of pretense and sham. He was a person of great personal courage. The things that he did to which Mr. Senft made reference were often done at considerable risk, financially as a lawyer, personally as a citizen....He wanted truly to run the Department of Justice better than it had ever been run before and in truth I believe he succeeded."

Click here to read all the eulogies.

We were not wealthy. My accomplished Reform Jewish Family was middle-class. In fact — my immediate family avoided wealth and avoided conversations about money — due to anti-Semitic stereotypes about Jews. Due to my parents' committment to civil rights and integrated education, my older sister and I attended the economically disadvantaged, crowded, and frequently violent York City Public School System during the 1960s and 1970s, during the York Race Riots — we were the only Jewish children in the entire York City School System. That is a far cry from the elite, safe private schools that Tom Wolf, Josh Shapiro, or Barack Obama attended. Being a Jewish child — the only one — in the rough York, PA City Schools, is a far cry from what most children experience growing up. On the other hand — there are plenty of wealthy and ultra-wealthy non-Jewish public figures in politics, sports, entertainment, and the arts whose careers clearly benefited from their families' wealth — the Kennedys and Bushes for example — but no one publicly assassinates them as spoiled princes and princesses, ends their careers, and snuffs out their families' legacies or their ability to produce children.