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My dad passed away three weeks ago. Still feels unreal. He was sick for many years and it was time. I remember this ski house in vivid detail. We would drive up to Stratton on weekends in 1972, in my dad’s BMW 2002 in Colorado Orange. The ski house was called Red Suspenders. Young people active in UJA Young Leadership and other Jewish groups held shares. I was always the only child present, except for this photo, which depicts a little girl named Stephanie. There was a pot plant on the kitchen table, a cone fireplace (it terrified me), and a very kind guy, Michael Schacht, who made the fires. I called him The Flamer, to everyone’s amusement. This sweater is in the cedar closet in Great Neck. I’m pretty sure it’s a Moriarty. I would “borrow” it in high school, to wear with my MacKean jeans, and return it, stinking of Opium, to his bureau. You can imagine how he loved that. His ski boots were Raichle Red Hots.

Eulogy for my father 
March 25, 2026

Thank you for being with us today to memorialize the life of my father, David Aaron Isacowitz. 

I always thought of him as “DAI.” He was never without his middle initial. Over the years, I saw him sign notes and annotate contracts with a capital D and then a lower-case A and I, always in cursive. He was proud of his name and what and whom it represented. His grandfather, David Aaron Isacowitz, died two years before my father’s birth. HIs grit, ambition, and passion for hard work were legendary. You could say the same for my father. Both men built something out of nothing. The first DAI, an immigrant, came from Schwerzner, Russia in 1897. He was a construction worker who, in a few short years, developed most of what became a historic center of North American Jewish life, Brownsville, Brooklyn. 

His grandson, the second DAI, was born under very different circumstances. He came from a family of great wealth, prestige, and privilege, none of which benefited him as he launched his adult life. Like his grandfather, the second DAI was completely self-made. No relative ever gave him a blank checkbook. He learned quickly not to expect handouts. His fierce independence was borne of experience. As he often told my sister and me over the years, Assume Nothing. 

With brains, gumption, ceaseless stamina, and the unstinting help of my mother, he proved himself to be a visionary in the field of enterprise software. The company he founded in 1983, Applied Information Management, also known as AIM, served the bulk of the entertainment industry, and did so for over two decades. At one time, every computer on the Twentieth Century Fox lot came from AIM, as did the software that ran the myriad business functions of a television network and film studio. Fox was one example among many. 

The business was tantamount to a family member; omnipresent, always important. We were extraordinarily proud of him and what he did daily to build and nurture the entity called AIM. I cannot properly express how hard he worked. Yet, he played hard too, conducting business via cell phone on many a chair lift. He deeply loved skiing, golf, walking, anything to be in the outdoors. 

He was highly cerebral, laser focused, with an engineer’s brain, yet reveled in the simplest of pleasures. 

He was very competitive, and hated losing, yet always rooted for the underdog. 

He loved foie gras and Howard Johnson’s fried clams, equally. 

He held strong and serious opinions on Middle East geopolitics. Yet, on a tour bus in Israel, he made frequent reference to Wally World, the theme park in one of his very favorite movies, National Lampoon’s Vacation. 

He imbued in me the importance of education, deep pride as a Jew, my identity as a Zionist, a respect for the armed forces of Israel and the United States, a fascination with aviation, and a fervent love for the music of the Carpenters. 

His attempts to make me entrepreneurial, a skier, and a mathematician did not bear fruit, alas. 

As many of you know, his health in later years was extremely poor. So much of what he loved – athletics, independence, the ability to do what he wanted – was taken from him. As sad as I am at his death, I am also heartened. The way I see it, he is finally free. He can ski every day, play endless rounds of golf, feel the speed and the wind of waterskiing. I like to think of him in the cockpit of a plane, happily flying with his beloved brother, Danny. 

I am excited for him.