Dr. Charles Alpert R.I.P.

On Friday evening December 12, 2008 Chuck Alpert – a former client of Cutting Edge Entertainment – passed away in his sleep.  I received the call Sunday afternoon from his son Joey, who simply said “I thought you might want to know.”

He was right.

Chuck was a good man, a loving husband, and one hell of a father.  I first met Chuck and Robin Alpert while helping them to plan their son Joey’s Bar Mitzvah.  I remember it like it was yesterday.  The theme was Disney, Joey loved Hip-Hop, and all his younger brother wanted to do was slow dance with our dancer Alison.  We later went on to perform at two more Mitzvah’s for the Alpert family, and it was shortly after his Bar Mitzvah that Joey came to work for us as a DJ assistant.

Chuck was a Doctor of pain medicine and rehabilitation, with a dry sharp wit that I will not soon forget.  I would kid with him – being in pain medicine – that he should consider me whenever he had free samples.  He would laugh it off, but soon I found small care packages on my desk as Dr. A would send everything from Vicodin note-pads, Kadian pens and Oxycontin coffee mugs.

His sense of humor aside, having his son Joey work for me these past six years and watching him grow up was to me the greatest indicator of the kind of parents Chuck and Robin were.  I have watched Joey grow up from a thirteen year old Hip-Hop kid with baggy pants and all sorts of other rapper-gear to a bi-lingual articulate college student with a noble character, intelligence and the empathy and wisdom of a young man whose future will assuredly be filled with opportunity and personal success.  Only great parenting can produce such a man, and Joey is a living legacy of proof.

The heartfelt sympathies of Cutting Edge Entertainment go out to the Alpert family in their time of mourning, and to all those whose lives that Doctor Alpert touched… He will be missed.

-Craig