A son recalls a Weequahic legend in new book
Bob Masin pays tribute to his father in a new biography.
Photos courtesy Bob Masin
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September 9, 2009
When New Jersey-born Bob Masin, a resident of Portland, Ore., for the last 20 years, learned that a Weequahic High School alumnus lived nearby, he gave the gentleman a call.
“I introduced myself and said, ‘By the way, did you know of my father, Swede Masin?’ And this guy is probably 30 years behind my father and he answered the same way everyone answers: ‘Of course I knew about your father; he was a legend.”
It seems that most Jews who grew up in that era feel that way about Seymour “Swede” Masin. He excelled in football, basketball, and track and field. When he moved on to Panzer College (now Montclair State University), he continued his athletic success in basketball and also played on the soccer team.
For all that talent, Swede Masin didn’t really try to make it as a professional. After a stint in the Navy, he played basketball for the Newark Bobcats for $30 a game. When the team moved to upstate New York, Masin, with a local job and a child on the way, chose not to go. He spent the rest of his life in New Jersey, working for 50 years as a liquor salesman and always keeping active in the sports that he loved.
Masin was elected to the first class of the MetroWest Jewish Sports Hall of Fame in 2004. He died a few months later from complication of Alzheimer’s disease at the age of 85.
Bob Masin has written the book all fathers wish their children would write about them.
In Swede: Weequahic’s Gentle Giant (Rising Star/iUniverse), he has crafted a loving tribute. Masin described the impetus for the book in a telephone interview with NJ Jewish News.
“When we started losing the Swede we knew, I started writing down some anecdotes that I remembered growing up. My siblings and I all adored him; he was such a sweet gentle guy for being as powerful as he was.
“It’s about an athlete, it’s about a father,” he said. “I think the Jewish community will be interested in it because I think he was a bit of a hero in the Weequahic section.” He also thought Philip Roth fans would be interested in learning more about the inspiration for Swede Levov in his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel American Pastoral.
“The story has nothing to do with my father’s life,” Masin said. “My father had a lot of fun with that. He was getting calls from all over the country from old friends who saw him as this character. I guess he figured if people knew about him, they knew the character wasn’t him. And if they didn’t know about him, he just didn’t care.”
“It was easy because the subject matter for me was so just so close. I wanted to throw some humor in there; there’s a lot of self-deprecating stuff about me and my siblings, but it was all in a gentle way.”
While the loving memories came easy, putting them on paper proved to be a challenge. “I’m not a writer,” Masin said. “I’ve been told over the years that I’m a decent storyteller, and that’s what I tried to do here, just tell some stories with the overriding theme being I had a great father who happened to be a legendary athlete in the day.”
His siblings — Dale, Patty, and Doug — loved the book. “I said, ‘Of course you do, you’re family,” he said, displaying some of that self-deprecation.
Masin, 61, attended Columbia High School in South Orange. He still marvels about the aura Weequahic High seems to have and praised the school’s alumni association for keeping everyone so close. “It’s really a remarkable thing. There’s a unity there that’s hard to describe.”
Comments
Len Kashner
September 17, 2009
Is Swede (Seymour) Masin the inspiration for Philip Roth’s main character The Swede in his book “American Pastoral” ?
Andrew Silow-Carroll
NJJN Editor-in-Chief
September 17, 2009
Yes. “He also thought Philip Roth fans would be interested in learning more about the inspiration for Swede Levov in his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel American Pastoral.”