By Donald H. Harrison 

Several hundred people today thronged the funeral of Rob Gross, a computer problem solver, musician and husband of klezmer performer and Cantor Debbie Davis of the Humanistic Jewish Congregation of San Diego.  Gross had died unexpectedly of a possible aneurysm Jan. 27 at age 63.

Conducted by Humanist Rabbi Toby Dorfman, the services in the chapel at El Camino Cemetery featured spontaneous tributes to Gross by a dozen mourners representing his family, the company where he worked, musicians and friends.  Together, they painted a portrait of a man who loved to solve problems, who found humor in cynicism and satire, who was devoted to his friends, and whose home was a haven for his children's friends.

His older brother, Bernie Gross, said their parents, Marty and Rose, both were public school teachers in New York City.  When it was time to deliver Robert Louis Gross, as they formally named him, by Caesarian section, they chose a date on which they could be home for his birthdays: February 12th, Lincoln's birthday.  Bernie confessed he used to run away from the home piano lessons his parents had arranged for him, prompting the teacher to take Rob on in his place. Bernie suggested he therefore deserves some credit for Gross's love of music. Dorfman noted that Gross earned a master's degree in music from Yale University before later enrolling in Brooklyn Polytech to take a bachelor's degree in engineering.

Coco Hart, whose husband Jim is an upright-bass player and has performed jazz with Gross, said the two spent nearly every Saturday practicing.  An African-American, she told the mourners that Gross always made them feel accepted and "never made us feel like we were any different."  In addition, she said, Gross could always be counted upon to solve any of the family's computer problems.  

Several other musicians spoke including Klezmer performer Ron Roboy who recalled becoming acquainted with Gross "at something called the Center for Music Experiment" at UCSD, where the musician-engineer tried his hand at welding instruments.

Roboy recalled that as his own musical career advanced, he tackled "Prelude to Tristan and Isolde," which, he said, contains a chord so difficult music schools can teach a course on it.  Roboy prompted laughter when he demonstrated how Gross winced whenever  he heard that particular chord.

Harry Gruber, chief executive officer of Kintera, the company where Gross worked on technical computer solutions for helping non-profit organizations raise money, told of seeing Gross the night before he died, joking in the hallway.  "I remember he said he loved working at Kintera and that every day he worked there he felt younger," Gruber related in a breaking voice

Ephraim Feig knew Gross both as a co-worker and as a performer.  Among his favorite memories, he said, was watching Gross and Davis sit down together to play the piano and sing, "Rob's face beaming, Debbie in Seventh Heaven...She would look at Rob and Rob looked at her, and their faces said it all."

Earlier in his career, while Gross worked at another company, Tele-Images, cousin Mike Schiff was laid off from a position in the Los Angeles area.  Gross helped him to find a job with his company, and also allowed him to live with his family consisting of Debbie and their two daughters, Paula and Eve,  for six months while he was getting back on his financial feet.  "Sharing their food, sharing their music..." he recalled.

A friend who went to high school with Paula—Sarah--said that Gross and Davis opened their home to their daughters friends, providing a place of refuge "when our own homes were not so kind and loving."  She said the love that Gross and Davis had for each other were models for her.

That prompted daughter Eve to tell how whenever friends came over, her father would count them out loud, and then ask, "Debbie, when did we get all these kids?"  Although the joke "got pretty old," he never tired of telling it, so the kids would beat him to the punch line.

"His cynicism and sarcasm is what got me through college," Eve said, adding that now she loves everybody, "except George Bush."

Humanistic Judaism believes that people live on as part of a human chain, Dorfman said.  "Each of us is an extension of the past, a precursor of the future.  We receive our inheritance, we leave our legacy."  

Towards the end of the service, Ellen Weller, a Palomar College music professor whose children were contemporaries of Paula and Eve, read a poem that captured the feelings of so many of the mourners.  She gave jewishsightseeing.com permission to reprint it:

What’s in a name?

(Rob Gross in Memoriam)

What’s in a name?  Not much you say?

But as I stand with you today

I think of the man, my friend so dear

His name was he, so you shall hear.

Gross comes from the word for great

For large for big, must have been fate,

That our friend Rob had such a name.

But great and large sound merely tame.

Oh, yes, the man was very tall,

Yet isn’t his height I measure at all.

It was his intellect, the towering kind

His overfilled capacious mind.

He was so smart it was quite eerie,

Electronic, computers, music set theory!

Poetry, literature, what is left?

Why he knew the best moves of the Iron Chef.

This was a man so big of ear

Great sonic beauty he could hear

From jazz piano to Kurt Weil’s sound

His knowledge of music was quite profound

The hugest funny bone had this bloke

No one else so loved a joke.

Voices German, Dutch and British

Pakistani, French and Yiddish.

The last thing was his great big smile

When Robert grinned, it stretched a mile.

The doorway to that tender part

I speak, of course, of his Grösse heart.

A heart so full of love and warmth that

Even though allergic, he loved the cat.

Love for his family, his band, his friends

He loved us all right to the end.

Now with a tear, a collective sob

We bid farewell to our friend Rob.

Where do we go? Who holds the map?

We feel the loss, the hole, the gap.

Let us remember the warmth of his flame

The man whose life was indeed his name.

We may still search for the unknowable and fate,

But Rob Gross already knew how to be great.

                                           —Ellen Weller
                                           San Diego,  February 2, 2006