Bud Herzog fundraiser to benefit annual CHS scholarship

Dear Editor:

Bud Herzog was my father and you are reading this sentence because of him.

I remember using an early internet application in 1994. My father sat beside me in front of a VAX terminal in the basement of the Clark University library, and he was shocked at my typing back and forth with college students in other states. One of my virtual friends, Dara, a nursing major at Purdue, later met me in person — and Dad’s eyebrows raised again, pondering the benefits and ramifications of enhancing the legal world with the internet.

Dad was a forward-thinking attorney who helped build a computer network for his law firm. He was one of the first lawyers to do this in Canton, founding what is now Rudin, Herzog, Ward, and Donovan at the Village Mall.

Introducing me to computers in the early 1980s and showing me how to use a 300-baud modem and dial to sites like CompuServe and Prodigy to transfer files with other users logged in, the world wide web was a new concept for Dad to grasp. He wanted to play with it, and he took over the keyboard on that spring day in 1994 — fumbling his fingers over this key and that, asking me how to do what I had done.

It was a special moment, as we bonded in a way we had done many times before around the subject of technology. The difference that day, unlike my pre-teen days learning LOGO and BASIC, is that I guided him.

On the weekend of my college summer break in May 1995, Dad died. A sudden heart attack ended his life at 46. The photo at left was taken that year. He’s in the middle, flanked by his law office partners.

Was it fate that my first post-college job was working as a webmaster? Or that I ran into and befriended his computer networking guide at a social media networking event a few years ago?

Dad loved the stage. Among his proudest dramatic moments were starring in a junior high school production of Gilbert & Sullivan’s The Mikado, being typecast in Moliere’s Imaginary Invalid during his senior year, and directing Edward Albee’s The Zoo Story in college.

He and my mother enjoyed watching my sister and I act in our school plays; and in the weeks after Dad’s death, my family established a Canton High School scholarship fund in his name. Over the past 20 years, we’ve distributed over $10,000 to graduating seniors exhibiting a love for the stage as actors, directors, band members, and crew members.

This month marks 20 years since my dad died. My family is organizing a fundraising dinner to bring people together and to raise money for the fund. We are dining on the evening of May 30 at Byblos Restaurant in Norwood.

In the name of my father and his computer lessons early on that directly led to my interest in tinkering with the web, would you be willing to visit budherzog.org and make a donation to offset the cost of education for the fund’s recipients? Or maybe you’d be willing to donate a raffle item for the dinner? Or maybe you’d like to come to the dinner?

All donations are tax deductible. Maybe you could share this message with your friends and family? If I impact you, then in some way, my dad also impacted you.

Sincerely,

Ari Herzog

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