Mayer Wantman

[From 50th Reunion Yearbook...]

Here is what Mayer wrote for our 25th Reunion in 1982:

How can it be 25 years since the Class of ’57 left Mount Hermon? Quantitatively, Mount Hermon represents about 10% of my life so far. Yet the influence has been enormous.

As I sat last month in my Radlett (just outside London) living room listening to the “Singers Weekend” record, the memories came flooding back. Singing “I saw 3 ships come sailing in” as a boy soprano in the 1953 Christmas Vespers, Harold Stetson’s Latin class (“The Society for the Protection of the Plurality of Agenda”), Judd Stent’s unique dramatization of the Bible, and other too numerous to mention.

Life has been kind to me. My wife Linda (and English rose) and I have 4 great children – the oldest is now the same age I was when I started at MHS. Helping them grow up is surely the central part of life’s work. The future of each generation is its children; through all their trials and tribulations, successes and setbacks, we must be the foundation, the wellspring of their values and aspirations. Sometimes we fail them, and we fail ourselves. Though an occasional battle may be lost, we can never concede the war. Each defeat or victory simply brings us to a new starting point.

I earn my living as a lecturer/consultant in computer programming. Again I have been lucky, because I enjoy what I’m doing and I get paid for it.

Bob Pease, Malcolm Peck and Jon Staley keep in touch. One of my regrets: it is unlikely I will be able to be at MHS in June. I remember many members of the class with great affection. We shared vital, formative years together. Few bonds are more enduring.



Linda Wantman:

I was touched that you wrote and included me in this special occasion. Mount Hermon was such an important and meaningful part of Mayer’s life. He talked frequently, with fondness and enthusiasm about his time and experiences at the school. It is a great consolation to me that he attended a reunion a few years before his death. He returned home, at that time, full of excitement about meeting so many classmates and renewing his connection with the school.

Mayer and I were married in 1967 in London, whilst Mayer was working over here on a 2 year contract. Following our marriage we returned to live in Boston for 6 years before coming back to London in 1973. Mayer had begun working with computers whilst studying for his Masters at the Sloane School at MIT. From then onwards he remained passionate about computers. He loved the challenge of computer programming and of developing systems. This was long before computers were in common use. He often joked that during the 1960’s, when he told people he worked with computers, it tended to be a conversation stopper! His enthusiasm never waned and he continued to work, in spite of his illness, until a few months before his death.

As well as his passion for computers, Mayer was devoted to and proud of our four children, who are now grown up and making their own way in the world. Sadly he didn’t live to see our three grandchildren.

We all miss him dreadfully. I feel certain we would have attended this reunion next year and I know he would be touched to have been remembered by you.



Robert A. Pease, MH ’57:

In 1961-1962, Mayer Wantman and I shared an office at Philbrick

Researches, 129 Clarendon St., Boston 16. He worked on the new SK5-F, and I worked on the SK5-. Mayer was an excellent engineer, and I predicted he would go far if he stayed in Analog Circuits. But he went back to Grad school and went on to other fields. I hope he had as much fun, as I have had in analog circuits. Every morning, one of us would bring in the Boston GLOBE, and we would turn to the page with the Word Jumble on it, and we would attack that puzzle simultaneously. No pen or paper allowed. I recall that I beat him ¼ of the time, and matched him ¼ the time, but I think he beat me clean, about half the time. I was impressed what a Harvard education will get you! Recently, I think I could beat him - I was in good practice.

I went to visit him in July of 2001, and he was cheerful, even though he could not get his white blood cell count up. I visited him in July of 2002, and he was hopeful. But he did not have good luck against the Big C. He was brave to the end. I sent him a bunch of recent Word Jumbles, telling him that he could not goof off nor die until he had done them all, and I sent him enough to keep him busy a long time. Good ploy, but, alas, it didn't work.

One good story is about the time Mayer got thrown out of the "Handel and Haydn Society" -- because he had grown a beard. (Now I can't tell you WHICH of Mr. Handel or Mr. Haydn had a beard, but one of them did, at times.) Mayer was a very good singer, in good standing, and had been singing for them for many months - and he stood on his principles - and would not shave his beard - and they threw him out. Life ain't fair. Of course, that was in the early 1960's. Saner minds might rule, these days - we hope.

But, life STILL ain't fair....

Rest in Peace, Mayer. We'll miss you.


Malcolm Peck, MH ’57 wrote this remembrance shortly after Mayer’s death:

The passing of our classmate Mayer Elihu Wantman on October 12 [2002] was a painful loss for those of us who had enjoyed a long and affectionate friendship with him. His varied enthusiasms, gently ironic humor, and generosity of spirit endeared him to all those who knew him.

After Mt. Hermon, Mayer and I were classmates at Harvard, where we frequently linked up with Bob Pease, nearby at MIT, for mountain treks and other adventures. Later, as we pursued graduate degrees, Mayer at MIT and I at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, we shared an unheated apartment rented from a Cambridge slumlord. Both Mayer’s sense of humor and his practical good sense helped us to meet the rigors of that existence. As fall semester exams approached, our ancient refrigerator expired. With no time to shop for a new one, I anxiously asked Mayer what we should do. His answer, “put all the perishables in the bathroom,” neatly solved our dilemma for the next several weeks.

Mayer’s closeness to my family is reflected in the fact that he was an usher at both my wedding and my brother Donald’s. He had the good fortune to marry a lovely English lady, Linda, who enticed him to settle in the UK where he imbibed enough of her Anglicisms to sound a bit like Alastair Cooke. They produced four bright and handsome children—Adam, Simon, Elizabeth, and Paula. Mayer’s work involved the mastery of computer technology that was never quite comprehensible to me, but which involved, among other things, the computerization of the London Stock Exchange.

Music was a great source of joy for Mayer, and he took special delight in choral singing. Gilbert and Sullivan comic operas were a perfect vehicle for his singing talents and his penchant for over the top acting. I remember with particular pleasure his creation of the roles of the captain in HMS Pinafore and the poet Bunthorne in Patience. I see him now, in full voice and with his hand upraised in a mock grandiloquent gesture, leading a celestial procession of peers in a heavenly production of Iolanthe.

Mayer is survived by two NMH siblings, his sister Joan (N ’56) and brother Charles (MH ’59).