LETTER written by lucy greenberg a dear friend

To all my friends and family:

I feel both privileged and humbled to be writing to you on behalf of my dear friend, Bob Paulson and this extraordinary book he wrote with the eyes of an advanced ALS "survivor" and the heart of a giant.

My family had the good fortune of meeting Bob, his wife Maureen, and their 3 sons, when their youngest started kindergarten with Ned in 1987. The relationship rapidly transmuted from play date exchanges to one of mutually shared joys, challenges and celebrations. We grew to a gang of 8 parents, all of whom had boys in the class of '00; and that group quickly coalesced as the days rolled into months and years. The Paulson boys are among the kindest, brightest and most musically talented I've had the pleasure to know.

And then there is Bob.
His background as a child in a large family living on and working the land in a small rural Kansas setting was diametrically opposed to the rest of us, who shared a more suburban, NY area childhood. As it turned out, his varied experience served to make him all the more intriguing. Farm boy... part-time musician and actor...nuclear engineer and ultimately intellectual property attorney. We felt almost provincial in comparison!! But it is Bob's music that ultimately set in stone relationships that became the bedrock of our existences.

A highlight of the year was the Paulson Christmas party where he held the room with his piano and his enormously amassed range of songs. We gathered around that piano; we listened, we sang along, and the world was in perfect harmony. When one of their boys joined in with their chosen musical instruments, it was icing on the festively decorated cake! There were Christmas parties going on all over NY; in offices, restaurants, and party spaces, but none were as pure and joyful as those memorable evenings. For one magical night a year, a lot of Jewish NY'ers were transformed into revelers of the first order. And when Bob and Maureen joined our family Bar and Bat Mitzvahs, they sang the loudest and danced the "hora" with gusto!

A most tender and memorable gathering occurred around the Bat Mitzvah celebration, in Israel, of Dani Goldstein. We were beyond fortunate to be included in her Torah readings, with The Dead Sea as the background, in a 10 day journey as V.I.P. tourists in that most beautiful and remarkable country. Bob was just beginning to show some muscle weakness in his legs preventing him from the archaeological digs and trip to Masada, but he soldiered on whenever possible. No one could have imagined what was to come. In hindsight, it feels as though that trip and the months that followed were, unbeknownst to us; a seminal moment in our glory days.

Bob was soon diagnosed with ALS and the insidious disease took hold with no mercy. As his conditioned worsened, it became necessary for Maureen and Jake (the older 2 boys already away at school) to help in every aspect of his life. They accompanied him to work, wheelchair in tow, for years; until work was no longer viable .Maureen, to this day, gives Bob his very life; she is a woman beyond compare. From the smallest trivial tasks of grooming and eating, to his continued socializing in restaurants and theatres, their days are long and arduous, but never does one hear a complaint. Never. And we are so blessed by their determination, to continue, for lo these many years, an unbroken chain of social intimacy.

We've lost our Christmas extravaganza but life has gone on as we have all adjusted to Bob's increasing limitations. This man's mental and physical endurance are unmatched. Bob considers himself blessed by family and friends and the circuitous twists and turns of a life well lived. For the rest of us comes the greatest blessing of all. He, along with his family's resolve, has inspired us in ways we could never have imagined.

I now reach out to you, my friends and family, to get to know the man and his story in a book you are unlikely to read the equal of. Much of the proceeds of "Not In Kansas Anymore" will go toward the enormous expenses involved in keeping Bob at home, a decision that some may have questioned but all have come to regard with admiration and validation. I urge you to partake of this book so that you can come to know this man among men that we have been privileged to.