The Cousins

By Kenneth Ring, Ph.D.

We were four California-born male cousins, all Depression-era boys, and all cherished by our parents since all of us were the sole issue from our parents’ loins.

Roger came out of the chute first in March, 1935; Don followed two months later; I was a straggler and didn’t make it until December of that year; and, finally, my cousin Cliff, a real laggard, didn’t complete our cousinly cohort until March of 1940.

No one in our Jewish family had ever been to college, but somehow we all became professional men and all of us had successful and rewarding careers, though only one of us had a conventional marital life.   

Because we were such a small family, we cousins were close-knit when we were kids, more like brothers than cousins; that was particularly true for Cliff and me since we actually lived together in Oakland for about six years, including the period of all of World War Two. Roger and Don’s families lived in San Bruno, a suburb of San Francisco, so they grew up there. We all visited with each other during those years.  

However, I think when Roger and Don were about eleven years old, their families moved to Los Angeles, so Cliff and I didn’t see Roger and Don that frequently after they had moved to the Southland.

It was surely before Roger moved to LA that he started to play the piano and he obviously continued to do so as he grew older.  He became quite an accomplished pianist and also, somewhat later, learned to play the organ. He was also gifted with mechanical and technical things as well, and I remember going into a dark room with him once to watch him develop photos. (No digital photos for us; this was really in the old do-it-yourself days.)

But we were all growing up and going our own way. Don, who was a child prodigy and whose father wanted him to become a classical pianist, found himself drawn to jazz, and eventually became an internationally renowned jazz pianist, playing with many of the greats in his day.  I, the first one in my family to go to college, eventually became a psychologist, professor and author, and I suppose I have to say with a singular lack of modesty, became famous for a time for my research into near-death experiences.  Cliff, by far the brightest of us all, became a distinguished cardiologist. Roger, meanwhile, had become a podiatrist, but was later to become very famous for his work in the outré field of UFO studies, about which I will say more shortly. So, three of us cousins in time did become, as it were, public figures and well known in our respective fields while Cliff achieved his own measure of renown in his field, but was not widely known outside of it.  (You can certainly learn more about our work and careers, if you're interested, by Googling us. For Don, it’s Don Friedman; for Roger, it’s Roger K. Leir.) 

Thus, we were all fairly typical second-generation products of an immigrant Jewish family. Once the strong prejudices against Jews, which had declined sharply in the U.S after the war, permitted Jewish kids to enter professional life with ease, we all took advantage of our opportunities and of the talents we had been blessed with.  

But once we were launched on our careers, I had very little contact with Roger and virtually none with Don. The only cousin I stayed regularly in touch with was Cliff. I was teaching at the University of Connecticut but traveling a lot in connection with my work, so I would see him fairly often over the years whenever I returned to California.

All this was to change in 1993 when the four of us decided to have a reunion at Cliff’s house in Orinda, California. At that point, I hadn’t seen Don in forty years and I hadn’t seen Roger for seventeen. It was at this meeting that Roger’s life took a decisive turn, which was to lead him into a second career and which brought him fame, the opportunity to travel widely, and deep professional and personal fulfillment. (The only thing it didn’t bring him was wealth, but that is another story for another time.)  How this all came about;  I will now disclose. 

Although for most of my career, I researched and wrote about near-death experiences (NDEs), in 1987 I became interested in UFO phenomena and began to work in the field of UFO studies. After I did my research and published a book about my findings and views, I became disillusioned with the field for various reasons and decided to return to my work on NDEs. However, Roger, who had had two NDEs of his own (one in conjunction with a plane crash he was piloting, the other involving an automobile accident) had always been interested in my work and at the time of our reunion had become quite intrigued with UFO phenomena.

At one point, Rog and I went off to discuss these matters, which our other two cousins dismissed as so much nonsense.  I remember saying to Roger, in a somewhat facetious manner, “Rog, I’m getting out of this field, but why don’t you take over the family business in it?” Roger was keen to do this and asked me if I could put him in touch with some of my contacts who were then luminaries in the field.  I was happy to oblige him, and before too long Roger was figuratively chasing UFOs. And the rest, as the cliché goes, “is history.” 

Perhaps here is the time to say a little about the relationships and dynamics among the four of us.

I was always very close to Cliff and fairly close to Roger, too, though we weren’t able to see each other that often. (However, once e-mail came along, we were able to stay in touch from time to time through that medium.) I had little contact with Don; our relationship was friendly and cordial, but without real intimacy.  One reason for that was that, although I loved classical music, I was never keen on jazz. 

Cliff was always much closer to Don, but, frankly, he didn’t care much for Roger. There were two reasons for this. One went back a long way and began when Roger had borrowed some money from Cliff’s mother, which he never repaid. (I believe she had helped him in medical school when he was training to become a foot doctor.) The other was that Cliff had no patience with or interest in “New Age” matters and was more or less dismissive of Roger’s UFO work.  There was no real bond between them, but Cliff was always and characteristically very helpful whenever Roger consulted him on medical issues, especially after his heart attack and periodically thereafter as Roger’s health declined. 

Likewise, after they had grown up in some proximity to each other, Don and Roger drifted apart. Like Cliff, Don had no interest in things UFO, and so as far as I know, they had virtually no contact in their later years, in part because Don was often performing abroad.

Of all of us, then, I was the only one who had the closest tie with Roger and it was both because of shared professional interests and the emotional connection we had. Roger would often unburden himself to me about his troubles, especially his financial ones and increasingly concerning health issues. He’s one of the few doctors I know who was chronically hard up (this may have been caused in part by his steadfast devotion to taking care of his mother, who lived into her 90s, and in her last years was both deaf and effectively blind).  I would not only lend him my emotional support when he was troubled, but also would help him out financially at times (e.g., I paid for his mother’s funeral) and I think we both understood that I would never ask to be repaid.  

Before turning back to Roger’s career as a UFO researcher, I want to mention one other personal note concerning us cousins that involved a lately discovered fifth cousin, a woman named Stefanie. 

When I was still teaching in Connecticut, I was made aware of the existence of a fifth first cousin living in New York. She was the daughter of one of my Uncle Bill, and his third wife, Sheila.  I knew that she lived in Long Island and was married to a policeman, but, somehow, we had never made contact until I was again living in California. I had written a personal memoir, including some pages about my relationship with her father Bill when I was a kid, and I decided to make contact with Stefanie to ask her some questions about her father.

She was thrilled to hear from me because she had loved her father very much (he had died young, too) and I seemed to be the only one in the family who had known him. She became deeply interested to know about her other cousins, and in e-mail she poured her heart out to me and shared a great deal about her personal life. In this way, over several months, Stefanie and I came to love each other very much. I also wanted her to meet her other cousins, and they, especially Roger and Cliff, were keen to meet her, too.  So, within a year, in 2004, we had arranged to have another reunion of cousins, this time in Los Angeles, where Don happened to be playing a gig.

Stefanie later said that this was one of the most important events of her life. It meant everything to her to meet her cousins and to feel their love for her. I remember that Roger, who was always the most emotional and family-oriented of all of us cousins, was particularly kind to Stefanie.  

Here’s a photo of all of us from that time.

During that reunion, Stefanie’s beautiful and loving energy swiftly became the heart of the body of our newly formed cousinly quintet. But it was not to endure. Tragically, within a year of our reunion, Stefanie was dead, the victim of a botched heart operation that was supposed to have been routine. We were all devastated by her death.  

Turning finally to a happier chapter in the lives of my cousins, I want to mention Roger’s work as a UFO researcher. In doing this work, Roger became famous within UFO circles. He was frequently interviewed and may have taken part in one or more documentaries.  We had many conversations during these years, mostly through e-mail, but occasionally in personal meetings, although our views about UFO matters often diverged. Like my other cousins, I sometimes found his ideas to be wacky. He was always hoping that there would be a film made about his work (living all those years in LA, he was always drawn to the glamour of films and to the studios in Hollywood), but those dreams were never fulfilled. Nevertheless, despite his increasingly poor health, he traveled the world in order to speak at many conferences, including a congressional hearing in Washington, and had a ball doing it. His podiatry practice predictably went to hell, but Roger was finally living the kind of life he was meant to and was richly rewarded for it personally as well as professionally, if not financially. I was very proud of and happy for him.

As the years went on, however, Roger had increasing difficulties with his health, which he would complain to me about and with which Cliff did his best to help him. But in the end to no avail. Roger died of a heart attack while in the hospital where he had gone for treatment. He was nearly 80 years old at the time of his death, the first of us four male cousins to come into this world and the first to leave it.

After his death, scores of tributes poured in. He was a beloved figure, and many people felt a deep bond with and sense of gratitude to him. He may not have been “a great man,” but he had become a revered one in his field and my daughter Kathryn tells me that at the time of his death, he had thousands of followers on Facebook. And I can personally attest that he was a very heartful and loving man, who was very devoted to the people in his family, even when some of them did not always appreciate him as much as I did.  

Don died of a quick-moving cancer in 2016 at 81 years of age. As with Roger, because Don was so well known and respected in his field, his death was widely mourned, and he, too, received many testimonials for his stellar achievements during his long and storied professional career. 

Now of us cousins, only Cliff and I are left.  Because Cliff’s father had lived to 99, and because Cliff, at 84, is four years younger than me, I had always assumed that he would be the last of us cousins to go.

But it seems not to be. Cliff had a terrible summer this year with a very long siege of COVID while also battling  a rare blood disorder. Recently, he was diagnosed with  a very aggressive case of leukemia, and after a month or so when he was feeling quite well, aside from some fatigue, this week he has suffered a devastating and painful deterioration in his condition.  In short, he is now dying.  Two days ago, he sent me this message:

I’m in terrible shape. I’m running fevers every day (101 last night). I’m afraid the end is near and it can’t come soon enough. I’m more than ready for this ordeal to end. The Hospice nurse is coming today and I’ll likely start morphine. I made it to thru Thanksgiving and had a wonderful visit with my family. This is not living, I’m simply existing with a walker and bed rest. I’m not up to FaceTime. Take care. Hope you feel better soon. If your research is valid, I’ll see you on the other side. 

So, it appears that I will be the last of my cousins left standing, though for how long, who can say? For all I know, I may yet beat Cliff to the other side. Either way, I hope my relationship with him and my other cousins will continue in some form after I, too, leave this world.

A sad coda:  I just learned that Cliff died this morning, December 13, which happens to coincide with my 89th birthday, a strange but sorrowful synchronicity. Farewell, dear Cliff. I trust you are finally at peace now and bathed in the Light of all-encompassing Love.