There are few things I want to do less than give this tribute to my father. The unflinching approach to reality he imparted had left me noticing his aging, and I was preparing to adapt, over time…. But my father never gave someone a challenge he thought them incapable of meeting.
All the wonderful things being shared about my father obviously come as no surprise to me, and I had so hoped to spend the next few years, hearing those things with him, but knowing how uncomfortable it would have made him to hear so much praise, as his own ability to act diminished, I have to appreciate that, as hard as this is on the rest of us, it was an ending with which he would have been satisfied.
I had hoped to spend the next years supporting him, as he always has supported me- my father has been at anything I asked him to be at, and volunteered for things I didn’t intend to subject him to… And The outpouring of remembrances from my friends, has reminded me, of how important it was to him, to know the people important to me. I was touched by the photos my parents saved, not only of me, but of Niki, Jeremy, Erica, Jason, Abe, and so many others. Many of my students and colleagues had stories, as they’ve driven out to Cal Poly Pomona for multiple events, marched with my students for a sustainable future, and for the rights of immigrants, and were happy to attend CPP sponsored Dodger games. Despite his years of public speaking at high-stakes events, family members have reminded me of how the event for which he showed some concern for his performance, was when called upon to officiate my wedding. He saw that a high stakes event. I think Navid would have stayed even with a minor error…. And the depth of his loss, is a testament to my father’s ability to welcome people into his family- completely. When you’re in, you’re in… That’s the for better or worse. And with my father, it was almost all better.
My father didn’t know how to be unproductive, and he will have posthumous work published (not a hint to his co-authors, or a comment on the reviewers- #2 I’m looking at you…), but the idea of slowing down, of doing less, of relaxing, was not at all appealing to him. Nor had it ever been.
Even now as he prepared to “retire” for the fourth time(?), he was finally finding the time to research our family history, finding a master’s thesis on one relative, connecting with ethnomusicologists while researching a family melody… he was organizing photos and records, and of course, gardening.
I’m not sure I ever remember my father reading a novel, though the books he gave me to read, were always meaningful. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, The Yearling, Black Boy…. Ya know light childhood reading. He never binged anything on Netflix. But he wasn’t quite as out of touch with popular culture as we used to joke. I remember him telling me these films will change how movies are made, when he took me to 2001, and Star Wars.
To vacation with my father was not per se relaxing, but it was always educational. Weren’t there museums to see, history to be learned, culture to be appreciated? I can’t imagine a trip to a beach resort without a sustainability tour. And I have been to an embarrassing number of train museums. From the family albums, apparently my mother married him despite the train museums.
My father had a quintessentially east coast Jewish sense of humor. Political, ironic, dark, but never mean. He had a good chuckle when he learned the Jewish space laser conspiracy centered on high-speed rail, and we certainly have exchanged our share of dark political humor over the years. But he also would go long game on humor, in a way I don’t think most knew…. When my brother was roughly 8- around 1982 (fine I checked the year online), he saw the old chalice comedy skit redone by HBO as a short, and thought it was hysterical, so in typical 8-year-old fashion (and I have an eight-year-old with my brother’s smile), he made a few too many jokes about the chalice, begging my father to re-enact the skit for him. My father, good-naturedly threatened to do that as the toast at my brother’s wedding, if he didn’t stop…. Over the years, once in a while he would bring that up… Fast forward to 2004- Steve and Shirley’s wedding. My father gets up to give a toast, and he opens with the exact same, largely innocuous lines of the skit…. The look on my brother’s face was priceless. Of course, my father proceeded with a lovely toast, And I know only four people there got the joke… but it was epic.
My father did love baseball. Growing up in New York in the 40s and 50s, he and his Uncle Harold’s favorite escape was in the rooting for the underdog Brooklyn Dodgers. And many of you who may have attended games could have mistaken him for teetotal, as he almost never enjoyed a beer at a game. Why? Because once, during a restroom break- he missed a triple play. Fortunately, he stayed in his seat in 1988 for Gibson’s home run, and As a Brooklyn Dodger fan, he saw most of the greats play live, including Jackie Robinson. He also took me to some pretty amazing baseball games, and thanks to his busy travel schedule, I was frequently the lucky recipient of tickets, even when he couldn’t attend. My first Dodger Game went into extra innings, and the Dodgers won on a hit by Steve Garvey. Since we never leave early, we were at the game where the Dodgers hit four home runs in the ninth, though we also suffered through a game where they blew a 13 run lead…. I was at Orel Herscheiser’s first start as a Dodger at Shea with the somewhat traitorous but still beloved Uncle Harold who had defected to Mets fandom…. We’ve seen more than one win by pitchers like Valenzuela, and Kershaw… And I got 18 innings of world series baseball- in one game. No, I did not leave early. And I rode my bike.
Despite his impressive personal achievements, he told me, more than once, that the real influence he had and what he was most proud of, -were the people he had the privilege of working with, educating and developing. He told me, “Not very many people read academic papers, but the influence we have, is in not only the scholars we train, but the many students who don’t become scholars, but go into the world, carrying what we teach them, the messages, values, ideas, and ways of thinking that we impart.” He saw himself fundamentally as an educator, and that approach, allowed him to remain true to himself, his ideals, and his values. Because what he valued most -were people. And being an educator wasn’t a one-way street. He valued what students brought and he integrated it into his thinking and as a result he never stopped growing- challenging his own thinking. That this was the real value of being an educator, the opportunity to expand people’s minds, and in turn, have your own expanded. Recently I had the wonderful privilege of two of my own former students returning to guest lecture for our annual professor for a day campus event. I had them speak about research, about data. And they blew me away. They had this deeply compassionate, humane view of policy, of research, of data. I was shocked at how much of my father’s voice was in their words. When they ended with, and this is what you taught us Dr. Wachs…. It wanted to tell them it wasn’t really me. I was just passing on what I had lived.
One of my friends jokes that when you bring sociology (and my father was undecided between sociology and civil planning) to other disciplines, everyone thinks your brilliant, but one is just asking for people-centered, critically evaluated, long-term planning. And that was effectively the mantra of my life. My father imparted that fundamentally research is about people, and people’s lives. My father lived his life never forgetting that every equation, every budgetary decision, every funding priority, wasn’t a number on the page, it was people’s lives. And those lives were precious, valuable, worthy things. For my father, every person mattered and should be treated with dignity and respect.
And seeing the many wonderful students he taught, and the people they have become, and who my brother is, and who we chose to marry (Shirley and Navid), and who Leia and Ziya are, he will never be gone, and the world is better because he was in it.
I think the many tributes and accolades that continue to pour in would have overwhelmed my father. He was a practical person at his core. But that’s not his legacy. The legacy he leaves is a cadre of people committed to social justice and equity, and human-centered policy. And I am confident that the scholars, practitioners, and activists, he mentored can and will achieve this. And that will be his legacy.
What a great loss in the field!
I greatly treasure my memories meeting Marty in the UK.
And Marty’s spirit lives on – We’ve been using his writing as core reading at Cambridge and we owe him a great intellectual debt. We’ll yet benefit from his broad-minded analytical approach he’s taken to transport for decades to come.
With my heartfelt condolences to Marty’s family.
I first met Marty while visiting Berkeley in the late 1990’s and deciding whether to apply to the graduate transportation program there. It was a brief, unscheduled meeting but Marty instantly made me feel at home and went out of his way to personally introduce me to several other students currently in the program. Over the next couple years I had the amazing privilege of having him as my advisor and being his student in several classes. He was an excellent mentor and one of the best teachers I ever had. As others have noted, when I think of coach John Wooden for me the image of Marty comes to mind. My deepest condolences to Helen and to all of Marty’s family. Thank you for sharing him with all of us in the transportation field.
What an extraordinary outpouring of love-filled comments from such a wide array of people! Marty was truly a wonderful scholar and person who had a profound influence on so many people. I knew Marty best when I was a doctoral student at UCLA from 1979 to 1983. Like everyone else who has posted comments, I feel blessed to have known him. Dodgers games, ethics, his smile, his generous spirit, and much more. His passing saddens me deeply, and my heartfelt condolences go to Helen, Faye, Steven, and the rest of the family.
While I learned the nuts and bolts of the planning trade from other professors, Marty taught me how planners should relate to others. Marty was the faculty advisor for my comprehensive project and our client for the project was LA Metro. When it was time to present our final report, Marty was more teammate than faculty guide. A group of us agreed to meet in the Metro cafeteria the morning of the presentation. Marty was there early and I’ll never forget thinking about how someone who had experienced situations with significantly higher stakes countless times before was treating this presentation like the most important event of his career. Marty completely and totally understood the significance of this event for his students and acted as though he was experiencing a seminal moment of his own. That instance showed Marty’s ability to be deeply humble and hugely empathetic at the same time – the memory of Marty in the cafeteria sticks with me everyday.
Dear all,
I had the pleasure of working with Marty at RAND for 5 wonderful years. Together we worked on several projects but my most cherished memories came from co-organizing a transportation seminar series. That is to say, Marty had most of the ideas and I happily carried out his “suggestions” for speakers to contact and invite to RAND. What was never lost on me though was despite the clear difference in our gravitas in this space (I was only a year or so out of UCLA’s planning program and still very junior at RAND), Marty never once made me feel like we were anything short of equals. Reading through the outpouring of kind words said before me, it’s obvious to anyone how many wonderful traits he possessed, but his ability to mentor and lift-up those around him was among his finest.
He was certainly among the most in-demand people I’ve met in my nearly 20 years at RAND but he always made ample time to sit and talk. Truth be told my favorite conversations with Marty centered on our families (he spoke of Helen and his children with so much love in his eyes); I was just starting my family and happy to hear his advice and stories. The same was true of baseball, history, and classical music (of which I knew nothing but was happy to hear him speak). When our son was born and we had no family on the West Coast, Marty made time in his very busy schedule to attend his Bris.
Arguably my favorite memory of Marty was how often he started his emails with “Dear…” — I feel like that habit was very much a reflection of how warm a person Marty was.
As a doctoral student at UCLA in the late 1970s I learned from Marty how to combine the rigor of method with the meaning of ethics. He embodied a wonderful attractive style of scholarly practice. We need not choose between right and good, we can combine them into acts of insight and practical courage. Farewell Marty.
How deeply saddening to lose Marty. Like for so many who have commented here, Marty had an immense influence in my life, both as a mentor and a friend. While I was in the urban planning program at UCLA and studying with Brian Taylor in the early 00’s, I had the good fortune to meet and interact with Marty on several projects, most notably in preparing a white paper for a special TRB report on the future of fuel taxes.
By happy coincidence, when I wrapped up my studies in 2005 and was looking for opportunities, Marty retired from Berkeley and accepted a position at RAND with the aim of expanding the organization’s transportation policy practice. To my great benefit and with lasting gratitude, Marty opened the door for me to come join him at RAND. In subsequent years I had the opportunity to work with him on quite a few fascinating projects, spanning such topics as traffic congestion reduction strategies for Los Angeles, endangered species habitat conservation plans in Riverside County, technical and institutional options for implementing road user fees at the federal or state level, and use of policies involving performance-based incentives across various policy domains. Throughout, I learned so much from Marty’s thoughtfulness and rigor, and at the same time Marty always went out of his way to elevate my work and help me move forward with my own career. In reading through all of the preceding comments, it is quite clear that this is a recurring theme for Marty – always helping others however he can.
In thinking about Marty’s life following this sad loss, and reflecting on all of the comments left by others, my mind goes back to a saying that I recall from my old football days. The basic idea was that at the end of a game, you didn’t want to feel like you had held anything back. Rather, you wanted to make sure that you “left it all on the field.” From all I know of Marty, and from all shared by others, I would certainly say that Marty left it all on the field during his remarkable life.
My deepest condolences to Helen and Marty’s family, and to all those who counted Marty as a colleague, friend, or mentor. May his memory be a blessing.
I was profoundly saddened to receive a message from Helen that her beloved husband had passed away. Marty and I had been classmates at the Bronx High School of Science, graduating and moving on to The City College of New York in 1958. We remained good friends during college, although studying in different fields. We kept in touch over the decades, and so did our wives (Helen and Naomi). I/We enjoyed visiting Marty and Helen in Chicago and then in California, and they visited us on a number of occasions here in Maryland, just outside of DC. I appreciated reading so many beautiful comments on Marty’s contributions to his field and the lives of hundreds of his students and colleagues. Naomi and I are confident that his memory will serve as a blessing to all who knew him well, as well as those with whom he crossed paths. Our condolences go to Helen and the rest of Marty’s family. I know they will be comforted by so many powerful statements of his lasting contributions in a broad spectrum of specialties and interests–in comments by all of his friends and colleagues on this ITS site. His memory and personal example truly should be treasured by all of us who knew him.
My deepest condolences to Helen and the entire Wachs family, and to Marty’s humongous family of colleagues and students. Marty was my PhD advisor at Berkeley in the late 90s. Like so many have said, his door was always open, and he listened intently and with great kindness. I fondly remember sitting around his table for highway finance project meetings, our UCLA collaborators participating via speaker phone placed at the center. I left the program to raise my son (Marty had told me “children are wonderful, and they change everything” – he was spot on, of course). He encouraged me to stay on for research, which I did, until my 2nd child was born with special needs and I was thrust into that challenging new world. I lost touch with Marty for a couple of decades, probably worried that I had let him down because I couldn’t “do both”. But last fall, as I was hastily trying to assemble a resumé, I dug my graduate school files out from under the house and found a box containing my papers from Marty’s Transportation Finance class covered with comments in his beautiful handwriting, as well as recommendation letters he’d written, articles we’d co-written, and various other notes. I reached out to him on LinkedIn to say hello, and to thank him for the amazing paper trail that allowed me to construct that resumé. He replied within minutes (four, to be exact), set up a zoom the following week, and after catching up, gently urged me to let him help me find a project back in the transportation world, something I’d never considered. Quintessential Marty! And of course he succeeded—at both the convincing and the finding. As all of these tributes attest, he was incredibly generous with his time and his talents, with his students especially – even those who’d gone missing for 20-odd years. I’m so grateful we reconnected, so happy I got to hear his laugh, and see his face light up talking about his family, the Dodgers, gardening, and his ongoing work. He will be deeply missed by me, and everyone who knew him. Rest in peace, Marty.
Marty was one of the best teachers, colleagues, and friends ever.