After going through the pain and anguish of burying a child, Joseph Gitelman has undertaken a project to keep his son’s memory alive, help others enjoy exercising in the outdoors and maybe even bring peace to the Middle East.
Jonathan A. Gitelman died on Feb. 6, 2016, just shy of his 47th birthday, after a five-year struggle against leukemia that included two periods of remission and three bone marrow transplants. His son, Lucas, then 14, donated marrow for the third and final transplant. Jonathan’s mother, Margaret, donated marrow for the other two.
Wanting to memorialize his son in a way that would speak to Jonathan’s passions and make a positive impact on the lives of others, Joseph Gitelman contacted the Jewish National Fund. That conversation led to a memorial page on the JNF website that outlines Jonathan’s story and serves as a fundraising tool for a charity that marries his heritage to his enthusiasm for baseball.
The JNF’s Project Baseball is building baseball and softball diamonds and establishing youth and adult leagues across Israel, where the sport — brought to the country by American expatriates — is growing fast enough to make playing space scarce. The project currently has about 1,200 players on 80 teams in 16 facilities.
Jonathan Gitelman’s memorial page includes a button that allows viewers to make a donation to Project Baseball in his honor, and keeps a running total of the money raised and a scrolling list of donors.
The “donate in memory” button sits directly beneath a photo of Jonathan, his son Lucas and daughter Hannah in Baltimore Orioles gear. The family set the initial fundraising goal at $5,000, but topped it so quickly that they reset it at $10,000. As of this writing, they were two-thirds of the way to their goal.
Joseph Gitelman, who lives in Columbia, says he is certain his son would approve of the effort. “I know he’d give an OK,” he says.
“Anyone who knew Jonathan knew his passion for sports. Baseball, in particular, was his all-time favorite from the time he was a young boy,” the page reads. “Jonathan’s love of life and baseball continued throughout his 63-month battle with cancer.”
A planner for the comptroller of the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in North Laurel, Jonathan Gitelman helped coach Lucas’ baseball team whenever he could, but chemotherapy treatments would leave him too exhausted and weak.
“The effects of chemo are cumulative,” Joseph Gitelman says. “You’re slowly killing a person, but they had no choice. Finally, his body gave out.”
A month after Jonathan’s death, Lucas, then a freshman, made the River Hill High School varsity baseball team.
In addition to the JNF page, the Gitelmans established a website at caringbridge.org, where those facing serious health issues can keep family and friends apprised of their status without having to make multiple phone calls and give the same details repeatedly.
Anyone with a CaringBridge account can read journal entries from patients or their families. Jonathan himself posted one May 29, 2015, to announce that his doctors had for the second time declared him to be cancer-free. A little more than nine months later, Jen Palich, a close friend of Jonathan’s wife, Amy, posted details of funeral arrangements.
Peter Kurz, president of the Israel Baseball Association, says, “The cliché, ‘If you build it, they will come,’ is so true.” With the help of JNF, the association is preparing to build a new ball field in the Israeli town of Bet Shemesh, “and we will certainly put up a plaque in [Jonathan’s] memory in coordination with the family,” says Kurz.
The association welcomes Arab as well as Jewish players, and Joseph Gitelman sees baseball as a valuable bridge between cultures.
“It’s a way to promote peace. Maybe instead of meeting on the battlefield, they can pitch at each other,” he says. “This might be the thing that brings peace to the Middle East.”
To visit Jonathan Gitelman’s memorial page, visit http://bit.ly/2jDAZfq.
Doug Miller is a Columbia-based freelance writer.
Photo of Joseph Gitelman by Ed Bunyan
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