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In Memoriam: Herman Wouk

When I was a child growing up in New York, my family spent our summers out on Fire Island. (I still do). I have many vivid memories of my youth “at the beach,” and of the people I met as a kid. One of them, the legendary writer Herman Wouk, died this week at the age of 103. Wouk authored the best selling “The Caine Mutiny,” “The Winds of War,” and “Marjorie Morningstar,” among many others. And there was “Don’t Stop the Carnival,” a novel that turned into an accidental bible for the hospitality industry. My memories of him were not about the author Herman Wouk, but about the fisherman Herman Wouk. In the early mornings, when the sea was calm, I’d ride my bike up to the top of our block — Atlantic Avenue, in Seaview, and then park it by the wooden steps that would take me down to the ocean. And I’d sit on the steps and look out. And there, standing on the hard sand as the tide came in about 200 feet opposite his big beach house on Beachwold street, the next block over, was a lone surfcaster. It was Herman Wouk, patiently throwing his lure into the ocean in hopes of landing a striped bass. I’d sit there, and smell the salt and the brine of the Atlantic and I’d watch him cast into the water, pull back the line, and then cast again…I’d see him there every day, and then in the late afternoons, when the wind would often pick up, I’d go back to the top of the block and watch him again. On Saturdays around 7:30 pm, as the summer sun was setting again, my mother would often join me to sit on those steps, because that was the day the big ocean liners would pass by on their way across the North Atlantic to Europe. We could always identify the ships by the number and color of their smokestacks. And again, there was Herman Wouk, the same solitary figure casting his line out into the churning ocean. I never saw him catch a single fish, but as I grew older and became a writer, I began to realize and understand his daily ritual. He wasn’t really fishing. He was thinking. He was creating. And he never stopped writing. He published his last book three years ago when he turned 100. Herman Wouk left Fire Island many years ago, but his old house still stands. And to this day, whenever I’m back on Fire Island, I make a point of riding my bike to the top of Atlantic Avenue, and then I sit once again on the wooden steps and look out at that empty spot on the beach, on the hard sand. I can still see the figure of the solitary fisherman with the floppy hat casting his line into sea. Only this time, as I gaze out at the ocean, I get to think. Herman Wouk will be missed.