Ambassador Evron: Tragedy in Radburn, Triumph in D.C.

A Hannukah story

Burnham Place, 1949 (Photo by Gretchen van Tassel)

We were skeptical when we were told that years ago the son of Israel’s ambassador to the U.S., whose family lived in Radburn, was hit and killed by a car.

For one thing, senior diplomats don’t usually live in Fair Lawn.

For another, when Radburn opened in 1929 it advertised itself as “SAFE for CHILDREN.’’ And there’s no record of a kid being killed or seriously injured by a car in the community’s system of footpaths and cul-de-sacs, which separates pedestrians and motor vehicles.

But the roads outside and around what Radburn called its “Safety Street Plan’’ are another story.

That was made horribly clear in March 1958. A 12-year-old boy, whose family was living at 12 Ballard Place, was killed when he was hit by a car while bicycling from Craig Road onto Fair Lawn Avenue.

12 Ballard Place today

Gilead Evron apparently was heading to The Grange – a part of the Radburn Association not included in Radburn’s original street plan.

The boy’s father, Ephraim “Eppie’’ Evron, was then a minor diplomat in political exile. But years later he would rise to great heights in Israeli diplomacy – including the post of U.S. ambassador.

The crisis of the car

In the mid-1920s millions of new cars each year were spilling each year onto streets designed for horses or trolleys. These streets, which had few crosswalks, stop signs or traffic lights, also served as playgrounds. Kids weren’t particularly good at avoiding cars; drivers weren’t particularly good at avoiding kids; and hospitals weren’t particularly good at treating the resulting cases of head trauma.

And so the plan for Radburn, “the Town for the Motor Age,’’ used cul-de-sacs, footpaths, an underpass and a footbridge to separate pedestrians and vehicles. Through traffic was directed to the streets bordering Radburn.

But Radburn’s marketing may have overstated its safety. True, pedestrians could walk from home to the school, pools and playgrounds without crossing a street. But anyone walking or biking to the commercial Plaza Building at Fair Lawn Avenue and Plaza Road, or to the railroad station, had to cross a street. Most residents could not reach The Grange -- Radburn’s indoor recreational facility -- on foot without crossing Fair Lawn Avenue, which cut through the community.

Over the years, the avenue got wider and busier. And in 1952, a footbridge linking the two sides of Radburn was demolished.

Everyone knew the avenue was dangerous. “It was hammered into your head: ‘Don’t ride your bike in the street,’’’ recalls Steve Schoenberg, who was growing up on Ballard Place when the Evrons lived there.

Not that such admonitions always were heeded. Steve himself was knocked out when he was hit on Fair Lawn Avenue while riding his bike to The Grange. He woke up in his doctor’s office with nothing more serious than a chipped tooth.

In Radburn, a home away from home

Ephraim Evron was born in British-ruled Palestine in 1920. As a young man he was a top aide to some of the founders of the State of Israel, including David Ben-Gurion, its first prime minister.

By the mid-1950s, however, he was in the political wilderness as the result of peripheral involvement in a failed undercover operation against Egypt. In 1957 he took a post as a New York-based U.S. representative of Israel's national labor organization.

The Evrons – Eppie and Rivka and their children, Gil and Tamar – rented a house in Radburn. Gil attended Thomas Jefferson Junior High School and joined the Boy Scouts. He probably was cycling to a youth activity at The Grange when he was hit around 7 PM on March 6, 1958, by a car driven by Joseph Nasta of Fair Lawn.

The first policeman at the scene found Gil lying in the gutter, bleeding profusely, and 110-foot-long skid marks nearby. He was taken to Barnert Hospital in Paterson, where he died the next day.

His father, who was in Canada on business, rushed home, The Evrons sat Shiva at 12 Ballard. Almost everyone came. The Evrons’ loss was hard to imagine, especially for kids. “It was horrible,’’ recalls Schoenberg, who was a few years younger than Gil.

Nasta was charged with vehicular manslaughter and careless driving. Eventually he was fined $100 for the latter and indicted by a grand jury on a charge of negligent manslaughter. But at trial the judge, citing insufficient evidence, dismissed the charges before the case was presented to the jury.

The following year the Evron family moved back to Israel. The Ridgewood Sunday News reported that the Schoenbergs hosted a going away party. There was no mention of the tragedy that had befallen the family.

Postscript

Prime Minister Golda Meir, Ambassador Evron, and Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, 1970 (enhanced CP photo)

Though Eppie Evron was not imposing – the London Daily Telegraph described him as an ingratiating, “slight, bird-like man’’ – he rebuilt his political career. In 1965 he was assigned to Israel’s embassy in Washington, where he met and befriended President Lyndon Johnson.

LBJ liked Evron – liked him more than his diplomatic superiors, including the Oxford-educated Israeli ambassador, Avraham Harman.

In 1967, on the eve of the Six-Day War between Israel and its Arab neighbors, Tel Aviv sought assurances of Washington’s support for a pre-emptive strike. A midnight meeting at the White House was scheduled between Johnson and Israeli Foreign Minister Abba Eban.

But before the meeting Johnson summoned Evron to the Oval Office to go over the issues he’d be discussing with Eban. And later, when Johnson decided to tacitly approve the operation, he told Evron first.

It wasn’t just Johnson – British Prime Minister Harold Wilson was one of Evron’s many other admirers. His obituary in The Independent (UK) would conclude: “Evron had a vivacious personality, added to a puckish sense of fun and intrigue, which Western leaders found irresistible. Heavyweight practitioners of diplomacy such as Henry Kissinger found his style bewildering, but he owed his success … to a thorough knowledge of Israeli and world history and the stresses felt by forceful leaders.’’

When Harman left his post after the Six-Days’ War, Johnson told Eban that if the Israelis knew what was good for them, they’d name Eppie ambassador. Although that didn’t happen, the ambassador's post was deliberately left vacant until Johnson left office, with Evron functioning, in all but name, as ambassador.

Ambassador Ghorbal of Egypt (left), President Carter, and Ambassador Evron, 1980 (enhanced UPI photo)

Evron finally was named Israel’s U.S. ambassador in 1978, and before retiring three years later helped pave the way for the Camp David Accords that made peace between Israel and Egypt.

He died in 1995. His Independent and Daily Telegraph obituaries were filled with accounts of his achievements. But they bore no mention of his greatest loss, four decades earlier.

Such an omission discounts the significance of Evron’s achievements. Although we don’t know exactly how he felt about the loss of his son, we do know he did not let tragedy define him or cripple him. Instead, he rededicated himself to what he saw as his mission.

There’s a Hebrew word for such rededication. It is Hannukah.

See also: In the 'Town for the Motor Age, a runaway car and a heroic sacrifice