Remembering Joe: Composer penning opera about N.S. relative killed in Korean War

An opera composer in New York City is hoping Nova Scotians can help him fill in some blanks for his latest project.

Dan Rubins, a schoolteacher, is writing an opera about his great-uncle, Joe Levison. But he never met him and knows little about his life.

Rubins's grandmother, who was Levison's sister, moved to New York from Halifax before Levison died.

"She really didn't talk about him at all when my dad was growing up," Rubins said. "My dad was two years old when Joe died."

Levison died in the Korean War, at the age of 22. He was a press relations officer.

With the help of old letters and newspaper clippings, Rubins spent the past few months piecing together as much information about Levison as he could.

"I realized there was so much story there of my family, that had never been told," Rubins said. "[It's a] story I really want to share on a wider level."

Levison was born in Sydney in 1928 to parents Felix and Hilda Levison. The family moved to Halifax sometime in the 1930s.

Rubins said his first piece of evidence of the move to Halifax is a newspaper article from 1936. The article states Levison's father, who ran a milk store, fought off a robber by throwing a milk bottle at him.

The family lived on Seymour Street, Rubins said, and attended what is now the Beth Israel Synagogue on Oxford Street.

Levison spent summers at Camp Kadimah on the South Shore with his cousins from Sydney.

After reading through condolence letters sent to the family after Levison's death, Rubins discovered Levison studied at Queen Elizabeth High School before transferring to what was then Saint Mary's High School.

He went to Dalhousie for his undergraduate degree, and began law school the same year he went to Korea.

Rubins has only been able to track down one person from Levison's past — a woman who was a romantic interest who appears in his letters from the war.

"It's really been kind of an amazing journey to discover that," he said. "She really helped me understand a better picture of who he was, just as a human."

Rubins said he's hoping to hear from anyone in the Halifax area who might have gone to school with Levison, or anyone who might have been a part of his Jewish life either at the synagogue or at Camp Kadimah.

"I'm hoping to get a sense of who he was as a person," Rubins said. "But also get a sense of the people who inhabited his world. I'm interested in telling their stories through this piece as well."

The first presentation of the opera will be in February, as a commission for the Fieldston High School in New York City, which has an opera program for high school students.

Rubins said he hopes to show it in Nova Scotia at some point, bringing Levison's story back to where it started.

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