Melvin Wax was a small, thin, 87-year-old man. But when he drove from his Squirrel Hill apartment building to the Tree of Life synagogue, he would park several streets away. “He walked several blocks to let those who really needed it park closer,” said Leslie Kart Gross, the sister of Mr. Wax’s son-in-law, Todd Kart. “That says everything about him.”
A retired accountant whose life revolved around his family and his faith, Mr. Wax was leading services for the New Light congregation in the basement of the Tree of Life on Oct. 27 when he died in a mass shooting.
“Mel was always the first one at shul,” said Ada Perlman, daughter of New Light Rabbi Jonathan Perlman. "He cared so much it didn’t matter if it was snowing, hailing, raining. He was always there Friday night, Saturday morning and Sunday morning. No one was ever there before Mel."
Going to synagogue “was as important to him as breakfast to most people," said family friend Bill Cartiff, of Scott.
Whether at synagogue or with his friends and family, Mr. Wax often wove, “Did you hear the one about…” into conversation, followed by one of his trademark G-rated jokes. The jokes “were so bad that you had to laugh at them,” said his childhood friend, Hugh Casper.
“The cornier the better," remembered Tree of Life member Julie Harris.
Mr. Wax grew up in Pittsburgh and worked for more than 20 years as an accountant for Calig Steel Drum. “Knowing that that’s what he did for a living made perfect sense,” said Ms. Gross, of Philadelphia, who has known Mr. Wax for more than two decades. “He was interested in numbers, facts, figures -- that mind that was so detail oriented.”
In retirement, he transferred that passion for numbers to tracking statistics about his beloved Pittsburgh Pirates and to following weather data. “He could tell you the temperature from a given day from five years ago,” said Ms. Gross. He also followed politics, and recently organized a voter registration drive in his apartment building.
About 800 people came through the visitation before his funeral at the Ralph Schugar Chapel in Shadyside, said Ms. Gross, many telling the family how Mr. Wax had touched their lives.
Mr. Wax had one daughter, Jodi Kart of Mt. Lebanon and one grandson, Matthew Ryan, a sophomore at the University of Pittsburgh. The family was small but extremely close, said Ms. Gross, and Mr. Wax saw them frequently, often playing card games or watching Penguins games with Matthew. “His grandson was everything,” she said. “They were best friends.”
—Matt McKinney, Liz Navratil, Peter Smith and Anya Sostek
First Published: October 28, 2018, 9:49 p.m.
