Michael B. Feldman (1944-2024)

We have received information of Michael's passing on April 17, 2024 from his wife Ruth. Michael was a distinguished member of the George Washington University Computer Science faculty, and the information here is extracted from several sources, mostly the biographical sketch on the GWU website.

 

Mike came to Princeton from Central High School in Philadelphia, majored in Electrical Engineering, and joined the Woodrow Wilson Society. His interest in computer science was kindled by a junior level course in the Fortran programming language (many of us will fondly recall our experiences using that ancient language). Michael had discovered a mild color blindness that caused difficulties during EE labs when it was necessary to decode the color-coded stripes on resistors, so he continued in the emerging field of Computer Science, earning MSEE (1970) and PhD (1973) degrees from the Moore School of Electrical Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania. During that time, he also worked as a computer scientist for Educational Testing Service and, after completing his degree, as a consultant in the Netherlands.

 

Michael joined the GWU CS faculty in 1975, retiring in 2007 as Professor Emeritus. Following retirement, Mike and his wife, the writer Ruth Tenzer Feldman, moved to Portland, OR and then to Oakland, CA.

 

At GWU, Mike taught at all levels but made significant contributions to undergraduate teaching. From the GWU website:

 

"While at GW, he taught a large number of different courses, from freshman to doctoral level. For many years he was responsible for the CS majors-oriented introductory programming course, and the undergraduate data structures and real-time systems courses. He received the Computer Science Professor of the Year Award in 2002, 2003, and 2006, and the University's Oscar and Shoshana Trachtenberg Teaching Prize in 2003. From 1999 to 2005, he served as chairman of the Computer Science Curriculum Committee.
 
"Dr. Feldman is an experienced teacher of Ada and Java and other computer programming languages: his University courses are well received and his week-long seminars have had a number of government and industry clients. He is the author of Ada 95: Problem Solving and Program Design, a freshman-level book which is now in its third edition. Since the publication of the first Ada 83 edition in 1991 by Addison Wesley, the book has become one of the best-selling texts in university first-year Ada courses in the United States and abroad. His intermediate text, Software Construction and Data Structures with Ada 95, was published in June 1996 by Addison Wesley. This book's first edition, published in 1985, was the first Ada-related text specifically targeted to undergraduate courses. Dr. Feldman also wrote Ada 95 in Context, the Ada chapter in Macmaillan's 1998 Handbook of Programming Languages."

 

Michael's services to the profession were many as he served on numerous committees, advised on academic computing, wrote curriculum guides, spoke at numerous symposiums, and chaired international conferences.

 

Here's a little known fact about Mike: He holds a Guinness Record for the New York Subway Challenge. With a friend, and perhaps to prepare for graduation, Mike passed through all 491 stations and around 662 miles of the New York Subway System in 23 hours, 16 minutes on June 1, 1966. Two tributes to Mike mention this feat, which must have required intensive planning and flawless execution.

 

While he was not the Mike Feldman of the NPR radio show, "Whad'Ya Know", he often received email intended for the radio star.

 

Nassau Herald

Memories and Tributes

Ruth Tenzer Feldman:

Since you have most of the professional aspects of Michael’s career already, I will concentrate on some other aspects of his life. But before that I’ll add that he worked for Educational Testing Service for a while, and our first son, Benjamin, was born in Princeton. Toddler Ben enjoyed sitting on the statues of the tigers.
 

In addition to his fascination with computer science and deep satisfaction as a professor and student advisor, Michael had a keen interest in trains, music, and travel. A few years after earning his Ph. D. in computer science from the University of Pennsylvania, he left his job at ETS for a one-year position with a data-processing company in The Netherlands, where he was required to speak Dutch on the job. Here’s a photo of his Dutch rail pass [see the composite photo at the top]—trains plus travel—so Michael! Decades later we have another photo [below] of Michael in the Hauptbahnhof, Berlin’s central station. You might know that when he was a student at Princeton, Mike travelled the entire NYC subway system in under 24 hours on one subway token. And, as we found out many years later, he’s in the Guinness Book of World Records for that achievement. He also was fluent in French and subscribed to a French train magazine for decades; we both had articles in the magazine.

 

Making music was Michael’s lifelong passion. He trained on the accordion in his youth, was able to play pretty much anything on the piano by ear (his favorites were the Great American Songbook and Tom Lehrer) and had a beautiful singing voice.  When he was 11 years old, he composed the school song for his elementary school in Philadelphia and this song, according to his sister, Nancy, and Facebook, is still sung by Edmonds Elementary alums far and wide.
 
Michael sang in the Princeton Glee Club, and later a community chorus and in synagogue choirs. Shortly after moving to Bethesda, Maryland, for his position at the George Washington University, he and I started to participate in an annual music-rich politically satirical show similar to the Capitol Steps. Michael served as the music director for about 25 years. Here’s a photo of the two us performing in the Bannockburn Spring Show, which has been in existence for more than 65 years. Ben was part of a few performances, as was his younger brother, Keith.
 
After I left my position as a legislative attorney for the U.S. Department of Education, and Mike retired from GWU, we moved to Portland, Oregon, where we lived for 15 years. Here’s a photo of the two of us celebrating our 50th wedding anniversary in 2019 by reading a Torah passage in our synagogue. We weathered the covid outbreak in 2020-21 with a daily songfest accompanied by Mike on the piano.
 
In 2023, we moved to a senior living facility in Oakland, California, to be closer to son Keith, daughter-in-law Amy, and two of our three grandchildren, Miles and Sage. Ben and his son, Jonah, live in Virginia.
 
This last photo [bottom of this page] shows Michael again at the piano, this time leading the monthly sing-along he and another resident performed for nearly a year, before Mike’s sudden passing on April 17, 2024. Sage, who is a gifted musician on the jazz trombone, composed a piece for the Berkeley High School Jazz Band in his memory.
 
He delighted in serving for over two decades as music director of the Bannockburn Spring Show, a wonderful, show in Maryland.
 
Michael is survived by his wife of 55 years, Ruth, his two sons Ben and Keith, three grandchildren, and of course me and my family. He will be greatly missed.

 

George Pilicy:

Mike and I were roommates along with Mark Lurie and Dial Parrott freshman year, and then I think the three of us other than Dial stayed together for sophomore year. I lived in singles after that and don't know about Mike's other roommates.
 
Mike was a thoroughly good guy, decent, hard working, civilized, honorable, always did the right thing, did what he was expected to do and did it well. I was the complete opposite but I have nothing negative to say about him. We got along totally fine, but I know he thought I was a bit crazy and he cut me a lot of slack. He went home to his family every weekend and I pretty much had no family to go home to. I was a country kid to his city kid, we had pretty much nothing in common. But he was a good guy.
 
His father owned a major auto dealership; I used to drive him crazy by wondering why his father sold beat up old cars to people, which wasn't what he did. Mike would look as if he wanted to spin up into a light socket when I would kid him like that. But it isn't that we were at odds, just that we were very different. His Mom used to come from Philadelphia and bring us Jewish foods I had never seen or heard of, like gefilte fish.
 
We weren't in touch in later years but I'm sorry to hear that he's gone. A genuinely good person.

 

Arthur Cohen:

I was sorry to hear of the death of Mike Feldman. I roomed with Mike our Junior year, along with Dan Goldenson, Charlies Okstein, Steven Spielberg, and John Bildersee in 1940 Hall (since demolished). Mike was an Engineering student and a smart and very nice guy. Unfortunately we never kept in touch after graduation, although I know he was a Professor of Computer Science. On the day of my wedding, June 1, 1966, Michael set a Guinness Book World Record by traveling all the lines in the NYC Subway System in the shorted time, which was a major Mathematical and Physical feat. My condolences to his wife Ruth and family.

 

Mike Lurie:

Freshman year he and I roomed together with George Pilicy and Dial Parrott. He was a great Freshman year roommate, very enthusiastic and interested in many things on and off campus. He invited me to his home on several weekends and showed me around Philadelphia.  He was very interested in Judaism, and was a Hebrew teacher at the synagogue in Princeton with the well-known Rabbi Gendler.  He loved playing the accordion, and would often regale us with evenings of accordion music. He also loved being a member of the Glee Club.

 

 

If you have photos or memories that you wish to share, please send them to the '66 Memorial Team (66_MemorialTeam@tiger1966.org). We will add them to this page.