BY RUDY FICHTENBAUM
Melvyn Goldfinger, who was associate professor of neuroscience, cell biology, and physiology at Wright State University, died on September 17 at the age of seventy-four.
Mel Goldfinger was a champion for academic freedom, shared governance, and the economic security of the faculty–the three bedrock principles of the AAUP. It was Mel, along with Adrian Corbett, who talked me into joining the AAUP to organize a union at Wright State, and it was he and Adrian who convinced me to be the chief negotiator. Without Mel, there would not have been a union at Wright State. Mel was the first grievance and contract administrator for AAUP-WSU. He was a tireless advocate for faculty rights and never shied away from a fight when there was a principle at stake. He could be charming one minute and be a harsh critic the next. But even as a critic, he was always guided by his principles.
When we were organizing, email was just starting to become popular, but it was not yet a reliable way to communicate with all faculty. So we did things the old fashioned way. We created paper flyers that needed to be delivered to faculty mailboxes. The administration prohibited us from using campus mail, claiming that it was illegal. Of course, that was a lie. But we needed to put out a flyer every week during the organizing campaign, and Mel took it upon himself to deliver each and every flyer. Mel had a newspaper delivery bag, from the days when kids road their bicycles and delivered papers by throwing them onto people’s porches. Every week, he could be seen walking from department to department, carrying the flyers in his newspaper bag, making sure they made it into faculty’s mailboxes.
Mel started his academic career at the medical school at the University of Missouri-Kansas City (UMKC). If you were ever in Mel’s office/lab, you would know he was a packrat. He never threw anything out. When he moved to Wright State, he even brought scrap paper including old exams and papers from Kansas City. One day, when I was in his office he asked me if I knew a Carl Fichtenbaum. I said, “Yes, he is my brother,” and Mel pulled out an old exam or paper with my brother’s name on it that he had brought from UMKC. After all, my brother had written on only one side of the page; so in Mel’s mind, only half of it had been used. The next time I saw my brother, I asked him if remembered having a class with Mel, and he said, “Oh yeah, Goldfinger, the guy who always wore his belt buckle on the side.”
The world was a better place, and Wright State was a better university because of Mel Goldfinger. I will miss Mel.
Rudy Fichtenbaum is professor emeritus of economics at Wright State University and past president of the AAUP.
I had the pleasure of working with Mel, Adrian, Rudy and many more on the Wright State union drive.
It may well be the case that Mel was the best natural organizer I’ve ever encountered. I can state for certain that he was as clever with wordplay as anyone I’ve ever met. When I first met Mel, one of the first orders of business was establishing our origin stories. When I told Mel that I grew up in Queens, his eyes lit up and he said, “You know, I used to play for the Mets!” I was plenty impressed, and asked him what position he’d played. He then owned up to having been a musician from an early age, and that he was the one who played “Let’s go out to the ballgame” for the 7th inning stretch.
What a lovely story. Thanks for sharing. I wish I had known him.
Misty
Mel and my (now deceased) husband played in various music groups together. My family became friends with him and Adrian and we broke bread together. When I told my adult children of his passing my adult son summed up Mel’s spirit. “ Mel was everyone’s uncle. When in Mel’s presence I felt I was the most important person in the room. Mel made me feel like a rock star.” Rob Skebo MS Eng WSU’08, BS OSU ‘’00