Emil L. Adler Jr., 92, modest and quiet to most, but with a subversive humor to the last, was born July 2, 1931 in Newark, N.J.



A soldier, artist and printer, a resident of Montclair for 55 years with his wife, Mary - father to Emil, Eric and Adrienne, all now in their 60s - he died Jan. 3, 2024 in Nashua, N.H. from, as he might say, "getting too effin' old."


It wasn't a complaint. "Aim," as Mary called him, never complained. He's the guy who once climbed a ladder to cut 12-foot hedges ("Aim, you're gonna kill yourself up there!"), fell, and all but snapped both ankles. Before heading to the hospital, he hobbled back up to the ladder to finish the job.


He always finished the job.


His was a storied life - if you asked about it. He eschewed a spotlight. In quiet tones, seated at the lace-covered dinner table, he would enthrall his kids' with tales of his childhood: Depression-era Newark, "Down Neck'' on "The Island." Him and older sister, Evelyn, born to his printer dad of German descent, Emil Leo Adler Sr., and mom, Evelyn, of Polish heritage.


They were raised on Joseph Street in the home of his grandfather, Michael Dluzniewski, a man so powerful, he brought the block's strongman bully to his knees in the clutch of his handshake. He single-handedly hauled dead horses off the streets of Newark.


Instead of being placed in an orphanage, four young step-uncles were raised as Emil's older brothers, nine in the house: Eddie died in World War II as a teenager on a battlefield in Europe; Mickey flew the famed daytime bombing raid of the Ploesti oil fields.


Over decades, some of Emil's memories faded, but never the names of his friends or the characters along the Passaic: Louie the Hook and Mickey the Dave, Otto who lived in a tar paper shack, Pete the Bum, Cockeyed Louie, Cockeyed Sam who poured nickel tins of beer from their bars.. There was Billy Horseshit ("Because his skin was speckled that way") and "Rubber Ass" Slikowski, Joe Getta-Ma-Hots and Puggy MCune, who walked bowlegged for years "because he carried his belly in his balls."


The list goes on: Felix Spitznagle, with 2 ½ fingers lost to a band saw, who still parachuted for the 101st Airborne. Walter Koski, a wild man, who tried to jump his bike over the skylight on the roof of the Sherman-Williams plant, fell through the glass, descended onto a cutting machine, and criss-crossed his body in wounds. Koski worked the scars into a mosaic beneath tattoos.


"My old man took him to the city hospital. Saved his life," Emil never forgot.


At Adler Printing in Newark, a shop founded in the 1880s by a great-grandfather ( German emigree, Union Army lieutenant, a printer and newspaper reporter) Emil helped his father with customers. One, a young mentalist, George Kresge, would grow famous as "The Amazing Kreskin" and perform at Emil's bachelor party.


Some stories were never to be told.


"I was raised in a monastery until I met your mother," he would forever tell his children, swearing there was never another girl.


Mary Bochicchio was 17; Emil, 16. She, fun and naive from Verona High School. Him, a citywise kid. Muscular, green-eyed, 44-inch chest, and with a quiet way, sweet and hilarious. No one made her laugh more. A Newark street photographer snapped a picture of them on their first date to see Louis Prima. They kept it forever.


Mare and Aim remained together forever, 70 years, until, at 89, she went to hospice on March 9, 2019. All night before, they held hands as they slept.


Emil rarely spoke about the hardships of his childhood, an amateur boxer dad, whose battle with alcohol sometimes led to words that stung sharp like jabs. It was Emil's mom - "Mahga" the grandkids would call her - who told him, "You have artists' hands."


They served him as a standout talent at Arts High School, the first public arts school in the U.S., class of 1949. He enlisted in the U.S. Air Force at age 20. It was his drawings, always of people, the rich characters from his life and imagination, that in 1953 illustrated the "Per Diem" yearbook when he graduated as a navigator and officer.


Over the years, if there was ever a perennial argument that erupted at the dinner table, mom challenging dad, it was over his lifetime resistance to making his art, rather than printing, his vocation.


"But, Aim, you're so talented," Mare would insist.


"I should," he would say.



But he didn't. Over the years he would explain how the freedom and confidence to support a family as an artist was not a gift freely given to kids raised in hardscrabble Newark. Not in his house, sadly.


In the end, he relished that gift on his children, who remain forever grateful for the hundreds of drawings and sketches, paintings here, sculptures there that have come to fill their lives. Scribbles on napkins and envelopes, birthday cards, Christmas cards. He drew the invitations for their weddings and birth announcements for his grandchildren. He drew sages. He drew warriors.


Over a lifetime, he showed them the world through his eyes. That's what artists do.


In 1954, Emil married. By age 25, as a First Lieutenant, he was flying over China and across the Pacific. Together, he and Mary traveled and saw more than most ever will: Hong Kong, the Philippines, Guam.


Then. . . they came home.


Emil built a family. He took a job, first at Adler Printing, closing it after his father's death and then, for 27 years, single-handedly running a monster, four-man Heidelberg press at Cook & Dunn Paints, frequently described at home as the slave-wage, Dickensian "sweatshop" owned by his mother's brother.


But it was family. And family is what mattered.



Son Emil (Aim) arrived in 1957, Eric (Air) in 1959, Adrienne (Age) in 1962. He watched them grow. He filled the house on North Fullerton Avenue with laughter and kindness, with curiosity and books, easily 1,000 books - on art, on history, classic books that told classic stories.


Every night, at precisely 6:10 p.m., he arrived home, the wheels of his car rolling over the gravel driveway. "You're father's home!" mom would yell. Every night, and this is no exaggeration - for all the hours he had worked, for as much as he had sweated or froze, with whatever frustrations he endured - he never entered the house with anything other than a smile, and "Hey there, hon!" a kiss for Mary.


He was the calm to her fire - the two of them, every morning, seated in the kitchen nook laughing or solving life's problems over coffee.


He never yelled. He never spanked, except for Adrienne once. If he ever had anything other than praise for or pride in his children,it was never known to them.


The same held for his grandchildren, each born a year apart, Julian; Willie, Aidan and Mary.


When mom died in 2019, part of dad died, too. They used to insist they'd always go together.


Instead, dad moved in with Adrienne, husband Gene, Willie and Mary, giving up part of their home and doing a saint's work these last five years. Adrienne has always said she was glad to care for dad, that he was no trouble and that he was too sweet and loved him too much to ever see him in a nursing home.


But it was hard, though. All are grateful for that love. When he died, Adrienne was at his side.


"Everyone loves your father," mom used to say, half admiring, half jealous.


That's true. They did.


We do.


And always will.


Emil Adler is survived by his children, Emil Adler III (Julie Flanders) and grandson Julian; Eric Adler (Tamara Morris) and grandson Aidan; Adrienne Adler Risher (Gene Risher) and grandchildren William and Mary; his brother-in-law Vincent Bochicchio (Liz Bochicchio) and their children Tony and Felicia Bochicchio, his nephews Steven Sears, Mark Sears and Donald Sears; niece Susan Rowe Broad and nephews Bobby and John Michael Rowe.