What follows is Co-Founder and CEO Alexander Eisner's eulogy read at the memorial of Jake Schwartzberg who passed away on July 19, 2024 a few days before his 64th birthday.
Jake was a singularity. He was a one of one. I am confident that there has never been anyone else like him before and there may never be again. Jake was a goliath, a titan, trapped in a tiny package…but he never let that stop him.
I met jake in high school. He was my math teacher 20 years ago. At the time I was one of what must have been thousands of students he had already taught and yet I felt like I alone, in my time, mattered to him. Like many 14 year olds, I had no idea who I was, and was only beginning to endeavor to find out. Jake had a way of talking to you that seemed to say, I know you don’t know who you are yet, but I do, and it’s going to be okay. And it’s why his students voted him teacher of the year over and over and over again. He didn’t teach down to his students, he spoke as though to peers and as a result, even the ‘cheese dicks’ as he occasionally called us, sitting in the back of the class sat up straight, paid attention, and engaged. If you never saw Jake at work, it was a masterclass. It was what all well-meaning teachers aspire to. A true believer in the ‘stand and deliver’ method that made us all believe he was working as hard every day in class as he could. This, unsurprisingly, inspired unprecedented work ethic from the least likely students.
Always a student of his profession, he was constantly learning and demonstrating new teaching techniques. Once he was discussing a method of checking understanding whereby at the phrase ‘fist to five,’ the students would rate their level of understanding a concept so the teacher could quickly ascertain the classes comprehension as a whole. He recounted that the very first time he attempted this he said okay class, fist to five and a boy in the front row responded with exactly his level of comprehension.
He used to weave personal stories into his classes to break up the monotony to great effect. Every year around Prom, Jake would tell his classes about going to the University of Arizona when he was 17. He met a girl, forged some documents, drove to Las Vegas, and got married. Then after only a few months of living in the married dorms, she was killed by a drunk driver. How can you be a person after that happens to you at 17. How can you believe in humanity after something like that? But he did.
In fact when I met my wife she was struggling to pass a math class and Jake offered to tutor her. If wasn’t long after that that my wife and I asked jake if he would officiate our wedding and surprised him with already having had him ordained. He was beside himself, and the only time I think I’ve ever seen him at all nervous to speak. He started the ceremony as only Jake could, “Welcome to my wedding.” He went on to quote The Power of Love by Huey Lewis and the News; something I’d be remis if I didn’t do now to return the favor: The power of love is a curious thing, Make one man weep, make another man sing, Change a hawk to a little white dove, More than a feeling, that's the power of love.
And boy did jake love. He loved like he did everything else, deeply, passionately, loudly, and in his own way. Some people know Jake and I founded a non-profit together. This arose out of his love of working with the special needs kids at Dana Hills. He came to me with half an idea to start a non-profit to benefit the special needs kids at Dana and I asked him a foolish question; are you serious? 6 months later we had a tax exempt public benefit corporation and in the 8 years since then we have done amazing work. Just another notch in the bedpost that is his legacy.
Jake is gone but will live forever in the thousands of lives he touched, in the millions of Jake-isms we just can’t stop saying, and in the utter crater he leaves behind.
I am a person who thinks highly of himself and of his accomplishments today because of the confidence Jake taught me. And in spite of that, he is also one of the few people to whom I have to give credit for my life. I would not be where I am today without him. I stand here today with hundred and hundreds of people standing behind me ready to testify that they too owe some of where they are today to this man who was larger than life itself.
I wasn’t ready to lose him. I wasn’t ready to live in this world which already feels a little darker without him. But like everything else he did, he left very much on his terms, sucking every last bit of joy out of life before he went. He left nothing unsaid or undone and now I’m left to answer the bigger questions of right and wrong by myself. But I think if I listen really carefully, I’ll be able to hear him, screaming at me like always, to walk a good walk, put forth great effort, to be my own man—virtues I will no-doubt scream at my kids to hopefully similar effect. They’ll think, “oh, that’s just something dad says” and they’ll make fun of me…but then one day I’ll hear my son tell his son to “walk a good walk” or to “quit poppin’ off” or to “be perfect and put forth great effort” and I’ll know that this is going on in households all over America and that he’s gone…but he’s not really ever gone.
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