Walter I. Black

Portraits of Walter Throughout the Years by Malinda Jo Muzi

There is no question that Walter Black was a unique individual. A few things stand out about his specialty:

He knew more jokes than Rodney Dangerfield, and most were just as bad.

He loved cars and had a dozen of them scattered around the Penn Valley neighborhood where he lived, most of them undrivable.

He especially loved getting a new Cadillac every two years, and parking them from time to time in his friend Linda’s driveway, where he took naps for a few hours before going in for a quick bite and a bit of storytelling from his past, which she unsuccessfully tried to stop because she’d heard the tales a hundred times previously.

He was known for drinking Dr. Bob’s root beer instead of Dr. Pepper’s because it was a few cents cheaper. Linda forbade him from bringing Dr. Bob’s into her house.

He once had a cat named Cindy, but after a couple of years, Cindy couldn’t handle his untidy house and left him.

Walter loved to talk on the phone, but refused to get an iPhone to get even with Steve Jobs for making the cost so high. This is also why he didn’t eat at fancy restaurants or buy expensive clothes. They were bad business deals, and as a man who had once been a part of his father’s business, he looked at the world this way.

Despite his eccentricities, Walter had people in his life who cared deeply about him: his cousin Linda, his friends Linda and Phillip, his Boca friends Ellie and Jeff, people in the banks he favored, Jon and Stephanie, who had endless patience with him, and mysterious others he encountered.

There is no question he will be missed, and as Hamlet said of his father, after the king's death, “He was a man, take him all in all, I shall not look upon his like again.”

Contributions ine Walter's memoory may be made to HopeGel, dedicated to fighting malnutrition in children in Third World Countries.

Arrangements by Joseph Levine & Sons (www.levinefuneral.com)