Realizing His Potential

Release date: December 05, 2006 |

By Lynn Gelman, Esq. P ’95

Not quite a year after receiving the worst news possible about their son, the parents of Eric Gelman ’95 transformed their grief into a generous gesture: With a gift of $50,000, they established a scholarship at Goucher in his memory. This article is adapted from the remarks Eric’s mother made at the 2006 Scholarship Luncheon, where the scholarship was announced. The first recipient will be selected in 2007.

I’ve learned that life can change in an instant. My son, Eric, was murdered on Sunday, April 17, 2005. He was working as a waiter in Los Angeles, had just ended his shift, and was on the way to his car. It appears to have been an attempted robbery, a random act of violence.

Eric was a great guy. I feel compelled to tell you that because sometimes, when we hear that someone has been murdered, our the first reaction is, “Was he a bad guy, doing drugs, mixed up with the wrong people?” That was not the case. Every 22.1 seconds a violent crime is committed in this country; every 32.4 seconds there is a murder. Eric was just in the wrong place at the wrong time, the ultimate in bad luck.

A passage in the recent bestseller, The Kite Runner, focuses on the Ten Commandments. The author explains that all of the “shalt not” commandments ultimately can be reduced to one: Thou shalt not steal. When you commit adultery you steal someone’s spouse; when you commit murder you steal someone’s life. Let me tell you what was stolen from us on that day and why we chose Goucher College as the recipient of a gift in Eric’s memory.

Eric transferred to Goucher after attending the University of Florida. With 40,000 students, Florida is a top scholastic institution with a raging football culture and a championship basketball team. Eric was a very good student, but his energies at Florida were devoted to his fraternity, his friends, and only lastly to his studies. Eric was the only student I’d ever heard of who got closed out of a class that was offered on television. To his great credit, however, Eric realized that while he was having a blast at Florida, he was not going to leave with the solid academic background needed to compete in today’s world. So, after much discussion and another college tour, Eric chose-and was accepted by-Goucher College.

It wasn’t an easy road for him, coming in as a sophomore, adjusting to winter and a more rigorous academic atmosphere. But he rose to the challenge, made great friends, learned to play lacrosse, and finally found what would become his dream.

As you know, Goucher has an extensive core curriculum, a way to insure that graduates receive a genuine liberal arts education and are exposed to the entire spectrum of disciplines. To our surprise it was the fine arts requirement that finally grabbed hold of Eric and allowed him to focus. It was not the pottery class that got to him. (I jokingly point out that, based on the tuition costs at Goucher, the two ceramic pots Eric made while a student-proudly displayed in our home-are the most expensive pieces of art we’ll ever own.) It was the class in acting. Don’t ask me why, or how: Eric had been a shy boy who didn’t even like to dress up on Halloween, but something about acting spoke to him, and that’s what he decided he’d try to do.

My husband, Rich, and I, devoted parents always, came to the first performance of Eric’s budding acting career-a role in the college’s production of The Threepenny Opera. When his brief appearance concluded (his part consisted of carrying a table on stage and burping), Rich and I looked at each other and said, “For this we drove up from Florida?”

Eric continued to study acting at Goucher, at a conservatory in San Francisco, and at the William Esper Studio in New York. After graduating from college, he stayed in Baltimore, where he appeared in a production at the Baltimore City Life Museums and enjoyed a short stint as the Cat in the Hat at Macy’s. He later moved to New York, where he made more progress, took more classes, and appeared in small plays and a Comedy Central TV show.

In 2003 he moved to Los Angeles to really try his luck-and to make what Rich and I hoped would be a final push before settling down and getting a steady and conventional job. He had given up the unrealistic dream of being Tom Cruise or George Clooney and was determined to become that unknown working actor who makes a living doing what he loves-the guy you see in a hundred TV commercials and movies, whose name you never know. He formed a focus group with some friends that met weekly to discuss what they had done to further their acting careers. To motivate himself, he posted signs all over his apartment that read, “What did you do today?”

The pinnacle of Eric’s acting success was actually a product of his endearing personality-a sort of serendipitous Hollywood story which, I am told, doesn’t really happen anymore. One day, the director and associate director of the TV program Monk had lunch at the restaurant where Eric worked. They were so taken with his energy and smile that the director said he wanted to do something nice for the waiter. His associate asked, “What makes you think he’s an actor?” “Trust me, he’s an actor,” the director replied. So, when they asked Eric the question, he gave the expected response: “This is LA; all waiters are actors.” They arranged for an audition, and he was cast as a member of the paparazzi in an episode of Monk. He had two lines and his own trailer on the set-where he called from to tell me he even had a stand-in. It was a fantastic experience. He was later asked to repeat the role, which allowed him to become a member of the Screen Actors Guild. After Eric’s death, the second episode, “Mr. Monk Goes to Vegas,” was dedicated to his memory.

Eric had an agent and had booked some commercials. He was on the cusp of finding enough success to begin to pay the bills-of being a working journeyman actor. But, since we know the end of the story, we know what really happened and what was stolen. His young life ended before it really got going. He had only a small taste of success in acting and never got to experience the other things that were on the horizon-a wife, children (which he often talked of having), a house and mortgage-the list could be endless.

So now, as bereaved parents, we are left to make do with what we’ve been given. And, since I am determined to be a “glass half-full” person, I have to look at what we had and try not to focus on what was lost. One of the ways I cope with this unbearable grief is to read-you name a book on grief and I’ve read it in the past year. While they’ve all been helpful, one short essay written by a father who lost a 17-year-old son was particularly moving. Someone asked him if, on the day his son was born he knew that he’d lose him 17 years later, would he have declined the gift? His answer: of course not-and nor would I, Eric’s father, his sister, his extended family, and his many friends. What we were given was truly a precious gift, and, in time, the happy memories will shine stronger than the black shadows of grief.

And that is why we’ve funded a scholarship in Eric’s memory. When you lose someone, you want the world to know that he was here, that he was wonderful, and that he mattered. And so, to the future recipients of the Eric Gelman ’95 Memorial Scholarship we instill his hopes, his dreams, his plans. We give others a small helping hand so that they can fulfill their passion.

Dr. Benjamin Mays, a dean of religion at Howard University and later president of Morehouse College, wrote the following:

It must be borne in mind that the tragedy of life doesn’t lie in not reaching your goal. The tragedy lies in having no goal to reach. It isn’t a calamity to die with dreams unfulfilled, but it is a calamity not to dream. It is not a disaster to be unable to capture your ideal, but it is a disaster to have no ideal to capture. It is not a disgrace not to reach the stars, but it is a disgrace to have no stars to reach for. Not failure, but low aim is a sin.

We should all ask, as Eric’s signs did, “What have you done today?”