Gil’s Obituary from The Boston Globe, May 25, 2007, Page D19

Gilbert Garber, 83, executive in family's travel company, auto school



By Bryan Marquard, Globe Staff | May 25, 2007

A decade ago, Gilbert Garber traveled to Jerusalem to gather with far-flung members of his family, who had spread to 18 countries.

"In thinking of arranging a family reunion, it occurred to me that I might plan a party to which no one would come," he wrote afterward in an essay posted on the Internet. He need not have worried. More than 50 relatives from 10 countries spent three days together in May 1997, sharing memories and securing the bond between families of different eras and disparate cultures.

"Our past is part of what we are today, and our children's future is being built on today's present," he wrote, adding: "As an archeologist uncovers places and things, the physical properties of the past, we were uncovering people . . . giving them life, personalities, faces, and stories."

Mr. Garber, an executive with his family's Garber Travel and Garber Auto School businesses for decades, died of prostate cancer Tuesday in his Lexington home. He was 83 and had previously lived in Belmont before retiring in the early 1990s.

The youngest of five, he grew up in Dorchester and Roxbury and spent much of his childhood in the Fields Corner neighborhood. His father's family was from Lithuania; his mother's from Poland.

When he was 13 he went to a friend's house after school one day and met the boy's sister, Lillian Waldman. They quickly became friends and married six years later, in 1943, just before he shipped out to serve in military intelligence with the Signal Corps.

"We were separated for 2 1/2 years," she said. "We wrote each day to each other. I still have all his letters."

Back home after World War II ended, Mr. Garber began taking college courses and working for the businesses his oldest brother, Bernard, had founded, but work soon consumed his time.
"His brother had started the driving school and the travel agency, figuring that the auto school -- with the automatic [transmission] -- wasn't going to live long," his wife said.

Mr. Garber was a driving instructor and administrator at the driving school and was appointed by Governor Endicott Peabody to the Governor's Highway Safety Committee. He served in various capacities in the travel agency through the years as executive vice president, president, and partner.

In 1963, he helped found the International Congress and Convention Association, which helped travel agencies become more involved in the burgeoning market for meetings in other countries. Along with the business opportunities, Mr. Garber wanted to encourage peaceful international gatherings, said his son, Stephen, of Boynton Beach, Fla.

"By doing this, he was connected to presidents and ministers of tourism throughout the world through our humble home in Belmont," his son said.

The work often took Mr. Garber out of the country. He always traveled with his wife, and they visited 25 countries.

"We met kings; we met princes; we were in castles," she said. "It was a very fascinating situation. We were always together and recognized together. I took part in everything in his life. He was a very special man."

"The love that he and my mother had together set an amazing example," their son said. "He showed us how to be attentive, loving, caring, devoted. He would buy my mother flowers every Friday night for the Sabbath. If he couldn't get them, he would have them delivered."

At 65, Mr. Garber retired and returned to the education he had left unfinished, attending Boston University and inviting students from classes to his house to compare notes. He graduated in 1993.

"It was a beautiful thing, because he was such an influence on the younger people," his wife said. "And they all came here to study for their exams."

In retirement, Mr. Garber was a trustee for Massachusetts Bay Community College and chairman of the trustees for Potter Pond Association, a residential organization in Lexington. He advocated for wiser use of utilities to lessen the impact on the environment in Lexington and in Eastman, N.H., where he had a vacation home.

Much of his time, however, was devoted to genealogy. Through his efforts, the family tree now includes about 1,600 names, family members said, including 484 who perished in the Holocaust.

"Genealogy is family history. In our case it is also world history," he wrote in an essay, posted on the Internet, about a 1994 trip to the homelands of his ancestors. The visit included a journey to places where extended family members were killed.

"It doesn't matter how many movies one sees, how many books one reads; nothing has the same impact as visiting, in person, Birkenau and Auschwitz," he wrote. "In Birkenau the barracks still stand in endless rows. Where they don't, the chimneys of the barracks stoves are still in place giving an eerie reality of what being there must have been. It defies one's imagination. The Auschwitz of the Holocaust is contrasted with the Auschwitz of today by green grass and a peaceful almost idyllic setting of solid brick barracks buildings, belying the terrible tragedy that took place there every day. The bodies are no longer there; the ashes and the ghosts are."

When Mr. Garber was close to his own death, he spoke with his wife, whom he had befriended 70 years earlier.

"I got to see him ask permission to go from my mother, and she gave it with love and with a blessing," their son said.

Besides his wife and son, Mr. Garber leaves two daughters, Linda Sagiv of Hof Hasharon, Israel, and Ronda Jacobson of Newton; his brother, Alfred of Falmouth and Palm Springs, Calif.; three grandsons; two granddaughters; and a great-granddaughter.

A funeral service will be held at 10:30 a.m. today in Temple Emunah in Lexington. Burial will be in Sharon Memorial Park.

© Copyright 2007 Globe Newspaper Company.