Morrie Schwartz in a Nightline interview in 1995.
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Morris "Morrie" S. Schwartz (December 20, 1916 – November 4, 1995) was a sociology professor at Brandeis University and an author. He was the subject of the best-selling book Tuesdays with Morrie, which was written by Mitch Albom, a sportswriter who was a former student of his, and published in 1997. The book was followed by a film version based on the book that was made for television in which he was portrayed by Jack Lemmon.
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Morrie Schwartz was born in 1916. Morrie's father, Charlie Schwartz, was a Russian-Jewish immigrant who left Russia to escape the Russian Army. His mother died when he was only 8 years old. After his wife died, Charlie Schwartz remarried a Romanian woman named Eva who became Morrie's stepmother.
Morrie had a younger brother, David Schwartz, who developed polio at a young age which caused him to be paralysed. Later in Morrie's life, Charlie suffered from a heart attack after running from two muggers. Morrie's whole family was Jewish. As Morrie grew up, he stopped believing in this faith and instead adopted multiple beliefs from a variety of different religions. He graduated from New York's City College, and went on to win a fellowship to the University of Chicago where he was awarded a Ph.D. in sociology. In 1959, he began teaching sociology at Brandeis, a nonsectarian Jewish-sponsored university, established in 1948. It was not until 1995, when he was dying from ALS, Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, that Morrie ended his career as a professor. A fatal neuromuscular disease, ALS is characterized by progressive muscle debilitation that ultimately results in paralysis. ALS is commonly known as Lou Gherig's disease, after the famous baseball player who died of the disease in 1941 at the age of forty. In adulthood Morrie married a woman named Charlotte and had two sons named Rob and Jon Schwartz. |