Life is What Happens
By Lisa Zaslow Segelman
People wonder why the Walking Women of Ventnor (see page 10) has a book club. Do we walk and read at the same time just like lead character Belle in the story, “Beauty and the Beast?” Not exactly.
While at a social event for Walking Women in Ventnor, local residents Sandi Taub and Sydria Shaffer met and bonded over their most recently read books.
“Sydria expressed an interest in starting a book club, and by January of 2023, we were up and running, connecting with women in our community,” said Taub.
Many local women who wanted to be part of the walking club, but couldn’t fit it into their work schedules, were excited about the book club’s meeting plan: weeknight evenings.
“I joined the book club a few months before moving to Ventnor last April because I wanted to make sure I had some sort of social life once I got there,” said Lori Moelevsky. “The conversation is always engaging. I find it interesting to get the different perspectives of other women.”
Recent titles have included “Go as a River” by Shelley Read, “Looking for Jan” by Heather Marshall and “The Measure” by Nikki Erlick.
“As a new, part-time Ventnor resident, I wanted to do something social that went along with an activity,” said book club member Joyce Wasserman of Ventnor Heights. “I belong to a book club in my hometown, so I knew that joining this one would inspire me to read books I wouldn’t normally have selected myself.”
This month, the club met at my home to discuss “The Last Lecture,” which was co-authored by Randy Pausch and Jeffrey Zaslow.
Zaslow was a New York Times best-selling author, Wall Street Journal reporter, a native summer son of Ventnor (and Brigantine and Atlantic City), and also my brother, just 19.5 months my senior. In the middle of an illustrious career as a writer, Jeff lost his life in a car accident in Michigan 12 years ago at age 53 when he was promoting his last book, “The Magic Room,” in northern Michigan. Sixty years prior however, Jeff and I were 5- and 6-year-old summer residents on Harvard Avenue, just a few houses from City Hall and seven blocks from our current home on Somerset Avenue.
Jeff co-authored “The Last Lecture” with professor Randy Pausch after attending a lecture given by the professor Sept. 28, 2017, at Carnegie Mellon University.
Universities have a tradition where they present a premise to professors: “If you were dying and were asked to give a last lecture, what would it be? What wisdom would you impart to the world if you knew it was your last chance?”
In this case Pausch was really dying of pancreatic cancer – and soon.
Jeff’s paper in 2007, The Wall Street Journal, suggested Jeff do a phone interview to cover the lecture, but Jeff felt it needed to be experienced in person.
The paper was unwilling to pay for the trip, so he drove himself from Michigan to Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh (coincidentally Jeff’s alma mater) to cover the story.
Pausch titled the lecture, “Really Achieving your Childhood Dreams,” and Jeff broke the story in The Wall Street Journal the next day. His poignant account helped drive people to YouTube to view the lecture, which subsequently went viral when going viral was a new thing.
With the lecture becoming a sensation, Randy was encouraged to turn his talk, and his outlook on life, into a book. Jeff was asked to co-author in part because Randy didn’t want to spend his final months at a keyboard writing a book; he wanted to spend it with his family.
Jeff, who had broken the story, was known for his ability to tell human interest stories with poignancy, depth and sensitivity. That’s when the phone interviews happened – scores of them – so Randy could exercise while speaking to Jeff and not lose time with his wife and young children during his precious last months.
“The Last Lecture” was released in 2008 and spent more than 113 weeks on the New York Times Best Sellers List, sold 5 million copies and has been translated into 48 languages. It is read and studied in countless high school and college English courses. “The Last Lecture” is an easy read at 206 pages with short chapters; some are a page long or less with surprisingly simple messages which even children can understand. One chapter is simply titled, “Look for the Best in Everybody.”
For all the sadness surrounding Randy and Jeff’s deaths, I’m grateful that after a dozen years I was able to share what I know about the lecture, the book and its journey without tears.
Jeff’s first claim to fame, local or otherwise, was his big win in the 1960 Ventnor Baby Parade when our parents created a “Hercules Untrained” float with just shy of 2-year-old Jeff as Hercules. After our parents moved our summer story to Brigantine in 1967, Jeff’s first published work was for The Brigantine Times. He rode his bike from Beach Avenue all the way to the lighthouse and The Times’ office to hand deliver his poem titled, “Sandcastles” about the sadness of returning the next day to a washed away work of art and love. The editors noted at the bottom of the poem that the 9-year-old author hand delivered the piece by bicycle.
Jeff was always into newspapers of any kind and encouraged and celebrated other journalists and writers. His idea of a good time was to grab a Philly soft pretzel and a city regional, or local newspaper like Shore Local and read sometimes sprawled out on the floor as family life moved around him.
When we lived on Aberdeen Place in Atlantic City, Jeff was a paperboy for The Atlantic City Press for years as a pre-teen and teen, insisting that I become an “papergirl” as well – groundbreaking for 1973. The job required me to toss papers onto porches from my bike. It’s no longer PC to say I threw like a girl, but put it this way; I threw like a person who had no chance of making the softball team.
College brought an internship for Jeff at The Jewish Exponent in Philadelphia and work for pay at Veterans Stadium as a hot dog vendor. Ever the writer, Jeff would chant poems at Phillies games to sell dogs and soda. “Man on second, man on first, buy a Coke to quench your thirst!”
Jeff’s journalism career went into full gear at the Orlando Sentinel, his first job out of college. He moved on to become a Wall Street Journal reporter and then the nation’s first male advice columnist, replacing Ann Landers at the Chicago Sun-Times. He wrote his own advice column he titled, “All That Zazz” for 14 years before returning to The Journal. Jeff was best known for finding stories with heart living and working in the land of a thousand questions, and writing about life’s joys and challenges in a way that resonated deeply with readers.
A note from President Bill Clinton on his personal White House stationery thanks Jeff for his column about Bill’s often troubled brother Roger, stating that not everyone, or most likely anyone, took the time or had the heart to write about him with empathy. Clinton was grateful that Jeff did.
“The Last Lecture” is part of the legacy of both Randy and Jeff, and is on many lists of the top 10 books one should read in their lifetime. The “head fake” in the book is that it’s not about how to die, it’s about how to live. And although millions have read the book, the target audience was three little people: Randy’s children: Dylan, Logan, and Chloe. When Jeff would send Randy links to stories about the book’s phenomenal success after its release, Randy told Jeff to “Stop googling me and go and hug your kids,” a perfect anecdote about Randy that Jeff told The Indianapolis Star in 2009.
“‘The Last Lecture’ was a life-changing experience for many of us. The book leads the reader to reflect on childhood dreams and personal life goals,” added Walking Women of Ventnor Book Club leader Taub. “It was surreal that this enriching discussion took place in the Zaslow-Segelman home in Ventnor, surrounded by Jeff’s other bestsellers, press about his own career, family photos and the memories and love of his sister. It was the perfect opportunity to learn about each other while honoring this amazing man, author and journalist.”
Jeff would have been so honored that readers from the shore towns of his youth, and the beach that inspired his first poem and turned him into a published author while still in his single digits, took the time to learn about the book’s simple, yet inspiring message.
