Richard Steinberg died peacefully at home, with his kids by his side. He had just passed his 81st birthday on America's semiquincentennial.

Richard grew up in Brooklyn, the son of Leo and Lillian and brother to Gail. He hated school but read voraciously, and he later spent his whole career as a public school teacher.

This is one of many contradictions that defined him.

He spent thirty years teaching at Tilden High School and Dynamite Youth Center. One of his Tilden students was a teenager named Al Sharpton, in a public speaking class.

He married Barbara, the love of his life, in the early seventies. They moved to a farmhouse upstate, raised chickens, grew vegetables, and installed the largest satellite dish known to man so he could get 260 television channels instead of the standard 13. He was a bonafide homesteader with a world-class stash of Sony and Betamax electronics.

Barbara died of colon cancer when Richard was fifty, a profound loss for him and everyone they knew. Shortly after, the NYC Board of Education offered him an early retirement package and he returned to a hobby from his twenties: traveling the world. He rented a penthouse apartment on Sukhumvit Soi 12 in Bangkok and spent half of every year there for the following decade. Another contradiction, considering he was the guy who hated making plans or ever leaving his house on Hilltop Drive.

Later in life Richard became a proud supporter of President Trump, having spent his youth protesting wars and volunteering for Bobby Kennedy, whose assassination devastated him. Richard was at the March on Washington, and he crossed the picket lines during the 1968 Ocean Hill-Brownsville Teachers' Strike because he supported community control over establishment power.

People found his political turn confusing. He was not confused at all.

Richard loved the Brooklyn Dodgers, the New York Mets, Stew Leonard's, his espresso machine, lunches with Zane, straight pool with John, Kurt Vonnegut, Howard Stern, good diction, his basement darkroom, movies, Toby Keith, Olivia Rodrigo, and YouTube. He loathed polyester. His motto was "lower your expectations." He claimed that he came up with the idea for bottled water, and that he only threw up once in his life. He cried audibly during movies, and his sneezes shook the house. He never offered up a compliment he didn't mean, which is why everyone remembers the ones he did.

Richard is survived by his children, Makaela and Ezra; his children-in-law Matt and Jaime; his sorta-like-children Yulia and Ryan; his five grandchildren, Amelia, Eli, Owen, Izzy, and Emma; his nieces Hilary and Amanda; and the friends who stuck around no matter which news channel he watched.