Poppa (14:25)

Poppa was broadcast on All Things Considered on Father’s Day, 1988. It’s a portrait of my grandfather, Isodore Silverman, who lived with my family when I was growing up. Right out of high school, I interviewed Poppa on my tape recorder – a hand-me-down reel-to-reel Sony. Those tapes languished in a cigar box almost twenty years, until I used them to create this portrait, mixed together with interviews from my family. The end of the program is a song about Poppa that features a haunting violin solo by Scarlet Rivera – the violinist heard on Bob Dylan’s song “Hurricane.” Poppa generated a great deal of listener mail – “driveway moments”, and received several broadcasting honors.