Thursday, September 10, 2009
Metro columnist Dan Casey: Roanoke veteran embodied true spirit of service
Dan Casey is The Roanoke Times' metro columnist.
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@roanoke.com
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Dan Casey
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Almost 10 years ago, the guy who had played Santa for a generation of Roanoke children gave up his chair at Towers Shopping Center.
Allen Levin, then 75, proved irreplaceable. When his back gave out and he couldn't lift children into his lap any longer, there was no question about hiring a stand-in.
Nobody could do it better than the white-bearded, raspy-voiced cancer survivor. So Towers' owners retired his chair and put up a sign explaining his absence.
Levin died Aug. 31 at age 85. He will be interred Sept. 24 at Arlington National Cemetery.
If it seems extraordinary that a Jew could embody the spirit of Christmas for so many, well, that was one of many extraordinary aspects to the Cleveland native's life.
The common thread that connected them is service -- to his country, faith, fellow veterans and his adopted community of Roanoke.
Levin, who lived for many years in Roanoke's Raleigh Court neighborhood, was a much-decorated World War II hero and a cantor at temples in Ohio and Virginia, including Temple Emanuel here.
As a music therapist, Levin tended to veterans at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Salem for 27 years. He performed as a soloist with the Roanoke Symphony Orchestra, in operas at Hollins University, and with the community theater group Showtimers.
John Lichtenstein, an attorney whom Levin taught in Sunday school, called him "sort of the foundational face of Judaism for generations of children and adults in Roanoke."
"What a wonderful man," said Janie Weiner, a friend of Levin's for 54 years. "He was always kind and gentle and understanding."
Levin was drafted into World War II while he studied at Ohio State University. He was one of hundreds of thousands of Allied infantry who landed on Omaha Beach on D-Day.
During Europe's liberation, the army communications specialist fought through France, Holland, Belgium and Germany. His awards included a Purple Heart, Army Commendation Medal, Combat Infantry Badge and four Bronze Stars.
After the war he returned to his studies in Ohio. It was as a student at Ashland College in 1950 that he met his wife, Agnes, an Ashland schoolteacher. They married in 1953.
They moved to Roanoke in 1955, when the Veterans Administration hired him as music therapist at the facility.
Mary Brumfield, who worked alongside him there, described Levin as "a legend and a visionary" in the therapeutic recreation field.
"He knew where the profession needed to go back in its early days," Brumfield said.
"The patients, they adored him," she said. "He made a lifelong impression on them."
Levin's career with the VA ended in 1982 when he was diagnosed with throat cancer. It was a battle that left him with some paralyzed vocal chords. It ended his singing career and left him barely able to talk.
But it may have aided the Santa Claus role he played at Towers from 1985 to 1998. "When I talk to the kids, they think I'm whispering," Levin confided to a reporter for this newspaper back then. "So they whisper back to me."
"He thoroughly enjoyed that period of his life," Agnes Levin told me Wednesday.
The bad back that ended his Santa days didn't stop him, though. Levin, along with Agnes, continued to deliver Meals on Wheels until 2006.
It's no stretch to say Levin served others for his entire adult life.
In "Man's Search for Meaning," psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl made an astonishing observation during his years of captivity.
Healthy concentration camp prisoners who had given up hope often died. But starving and disease-ravaged prisoners who hadn't given up hope often made it through the ordeal.
The difference was, despite their suffering, the latter were able to find meaning in their lives.
I never knew Levin. But you can't talk very long with those who did without understanding that he found meaning almost everywhere he turned.
It was in serving others.
That's a lesson for us all.
