When my father was the director of Camp Tel Yehuda, Young Judaea’s summer camp in the heart of German Bund territory, along the Delaware River a few hours from New York City, he was sometimes called “Big Red.”   He was big, about six feet one, and heavy, over 230 or maybe even 240, at times.  He was red, as his sometimes severe psoriasis left his unscaled skin a sore, reddish hue.   He may have also had what they call rosacea, a condition that reddens the skin of the face.  

I heard him referred to as Big Red only once, by a friend of mine at camp who made the reference with a coy smile.   I smiled too.  Good name for him, I guess.   There was also a cinnamon flavored gum at the time called Big Red.  It came, unsurprisingly, in a red package, each slice wrapped in red paper.

Funny to think of it now, but at one time my father could have been called Big Red not for his rosy skin tone, but for his political views.   By the time he was an old man he was more concerned with holding on to what he had worked hard all his life to earn and keep than with the larger, unsolvable problem of social justice, but he never completely lost the impulse to identify with the weak, the marginalized, the oppressed.   He just passed that on to his children.