From a reader:
Izzy was a bit more complicated than all that. He was an across the street neighbor. He and his wife befriended my very young son and over the years we became friends. When I learned he liked to swim I invited them to join us around our pool on Sundays where others–Richard Perle and Nina Totenberg, for example–were regulars . We’d swim and argue civilly. Before he died, he told me Perle was right and he was wrong. He thought the Soviet Union would change with economic prosperity and Perle thought only Reagan’s way would work. He said he regarded Richard as the hero . His wife who ran the business end of the newsletter was a Republican. Her niece, Kathy Boudin, was convicted for her role in the Weather Underground. Her nephew, Kathy’s brother, was a conservative Judge on the US Ct of Appeals for the District of Columbia, appointed by Reagan. Izzy and Esther’s son-in-law won a Nobel prize for co-inventing Interferon. Their daughter was a feminist poet. Esther never could understand her daughter’s anger at the “patriarchy”. “He won the Nobel Prize for her. What more does she want?”