He was a staple of my childhood, an awful lot of which depended on audio rather than video, and which was marinated in a culture of literate, clever, often funny, but always appropriate, language.
When I was three or four years old, it was exemplified by the likes of Beatrix Potter. And I was never prouder, sixty years or so later, that one of my granddaughter’s first words, taken from her beloved stories, was “soporific.” She knew exactly what it meant. And used it properly in sentences.
Or that she understood the Elephant Child’s issues regarding “satiable” and “insatiable” from a very early age, before she could speak in paragraphs about much else.
When she was three or so, she’d charge around the house, shouting “Mud, Mud, Curious Mud!” a not-quite-exact quote from the Flanders and Swann song, but close enough to indicate that she was part of our tradition:
The genius of very smart performers, either in print or on tape with a simple instrument, and the power of language to instruct, entertain, and amuse those of any age. And historically, so important.
Tom Lehrer took that to a different level. One man. One piano. And a wickedly smart approach:
And then there was my favorite among many. So prescient. So good. So true:
Some years ago, Lehrer gifted his entire oeuvre to the public domain. The webpage enumerating his offerings can be found here. I do hope he’s taken precautions to preserve such a thing for a very long time to come.
Tom Lehrer, Harvard graduate and National Security Agency alum, never married, and had no children. After his earlier academic experiences, he taught math, both at Harvard and at the University of California, Santa Cruz, until 2001. Along the way, I have a pretty good sense that–like my equally “childless” Auntie Pat–he fathered and grandfathered in, and influenced, the lives of generations of very smart young people to come.
He died, at the age of 97, on July 27, 2025.
There’s a fine Ricochet post on the subject of Lehrer’s passing, here. And one of my comments in the thread:
Hard to see how we’ve progressed over the years.
I’m open to suggestions as to how some folks thinks that might be true.
1-2-3-Go!
