Old Friends: Memoirist Recalls Longtime Friendship with Art Garfunkel

April 27, 2021 JTA

Singer Art Garfunkel (left) and his longtime friend, Sanford Greenberg, are shown here horsing around in the 1970s. (Photo courtesy of Sanford Greenberg via JTA)

By David Rullo

Sanford Greenberg recalls walking down Amsterdam Avenue in Manhattan’s Morningside Heights neighborhood back in 1959 with his best friend, Arthur. They’d just completed a humanities class at Columbia University.

During their stroll, Arthur suddenly stopped to point out something that caught his eye.

“‘Sanford, I’d like to show you this patch of grass, and I’d like you to really look at it,’” Greenberg remembers his friend saying. “He was pointing out how the light illuminated the beauty and complexities of its colors. I was absolutely mesmerized. No one I had known would take time out to admire a measly patch of grass.”

Greenberg’s buddy and college roommate would soon be better known to the world as Art Garfunkel of the pop-folk duo Simon & Garfunkel.

That poignant moment is particularly ironic since less than two years later, Greenberg would be blind.

“I was pitching in a baseball game right before my junior year,” says Greenberg, a native of Buffalo, N.Y. “Suddenly, in the seventh inning my eyes became very cloudy, very steamy, and I was having a hard time concentrating on the batter. I knew there was something very bad going on. I stumbled to the sideline and dropped to the ground.”

An ophthalmologist diagnosed Greenberg with allergic conjunctivitis. After two treatments — one he labeled “ineffective,” and a second of topical steroids — his condition worsened. A different doctor told Greenberg he was actually suffering from glaucoma and, due to the previous treatments, would soon be blind.

In his new memoir, “Hello Darkness, My Old Friend” (Post Hill Press), Greenberg credits Garfunkel with lifting him out of the deepest pits of despair and helping him begin navigating life as a blind man at just 20 years old.

“He changed all of his habits to help me out,” Greenberg says of the “Bridge Over Troubled Water” singer, who wrote the introduction to the book. “He would take me out in the city, walk me to class, help me fix my tape recorder.

“Most importantly, he would read to me regularly. He’d walk into the room and say, ‘Sanford, Darkness is going to read to you from “The Iliad” today,’ or ‘Sanford, Darkness is going to read to you today.’ I suppose he meant that, for me, his voice was emerging from the darkness. Because he called himself Darkness, I decided that should be the title of my book.”

Greenberg — who is now chairman of the board of governors of Baltimore’s Johns Hopkins Wilmer Eye Institute — eventually graduated from Columbia and earned a doctorate from the department of government at Harvard University.

He married his high school sweetheart, Sue, and along the way became a successful inventor, investor, entrepreneur and philanthropist. He and his wife live in Washington, D.C., and have three children and four grandchildren.

‘To Look for America’

In 1939, Greenberg’s father, Albert, moved to the United States to escape the Holocaust and became a tailor, but he died when Greenberg was just 5. His mother remarried and raised three children with her second husband, Carl.

In retrospect, the family seemed predisposed to unusual eye crises. Carl was hit in the eye by a disgruntled employee and required a prosthetic. Greenberg’s grandmother, Pauline, also lost an eye from a broken spring in a cradle while babysitting in her native Poland.

A member of the Adas Israel Congregation in D.C., Greenberg considers himself religious and spiritual.

“For me, being religious means you must wonder at the blessings all around us,” he says. “We must model God’s creation, otherwise we miss the magic of daily living.”

Memories of davening with Garfunkel in their college dorm ignite that sense of wonder for Greenberg.

“Anyone hearing his voice singing the prayers, they would be in simple awe,” he says. “Throughout life, I have been blessed with music, music that came from the sweetest singer in the universe.”

After graduation, when the singer decided to leave architecture school to follow his dream to create music, Greenberg had the opportunity to pay back his friend.

“I got a call from Arthur. He said, ‘I want to go into the music business with my friend, Paul [Simon]. But I need $400,’” Greenberg says. “Before he finished, I told him he would have it. Sue and I had $404 in our checking account, and I sent it.”

The two had made a pact back in their dorm room that if either ever needed help, “the other would come to his aid regardless of circumstance.”

To this day, Greenberg has a deep and abiding love and friendship with Garfunkel, now 78. But there’s one person that has provided the cornerstone to his life.

“I have to talk about the centrality of my then girlfriend, now wife, Sue,” Greenberg says. “I dedicated the book to her and I said, ‘For Sue, the one who has always been there.’

“When I went blind, I was convinced she would leave me,” he says. “She stayed with me through the ugliest part of my life. She was valorous and, in my mind, the hero of the book, certainly the center of gravity for my life. You can read it, she’s on every page in the book.”

David Rullo is a staff writer at the Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle. This article was provided by the JTA global Jewish news source.