How a troublemaking private school dropout became the Johnny Appleseed of tech
Sure, Tekserve founder David Lerner could be difficult, but he was also the consummate mensch
Before he co-founded Tekserve, Lerner worked at the tiny engineering office of WBAI. Courtesy of Dick Demenus
David Lerner was a difficult mensch.
Lerner passed away on Nov. 12 at the age of 72 and in the days that followed some who were close to the man recounted his kindnesses but they also used the word “difficult” to describe him.
“He was a difficult man but he was still my guy,” his wife Lorren Erstad told me.
Jan Albert, who met Lerner when they were both teenagers volunteering at the countercultural radio station WBAI, posted on Facebook: “I will always remember David for his immense generosity and the fact that he was an unfailingly fair and ethical (if difficult) human being.”
And Harold Berkowitz, who volunteered with Lerner at the Lifelong Peer Learning Program (LP2), offered perhaps the most eloquent description of how he was difficult. Berkowitz wrote that Lerner was “gruff but kind, curmudgeonly but sweet, blunt but tactful, modest yet very knowing.”
As for the mensch that was David Lerner, Ruth Mackaman, another LP2 volunteer, recalled that during the COVID lockdown Lerner got the organization up and running on Zoom, then shelled out his own money to buy iPads for at least ten members who didn’t have computers. He then proceeded to pedal around Manhattan and Brooklyn on a Citibike and give them away. This prompted one of his friends to joke about Lerner being the Johnny Appleseed of tech.
From time to time, Lerner would ask me about the radio stories I was working on. When I told him I had just finished a piece about a young woman in the South Bronx afflicted with cerebral palsy who had no voluntary movement of her arms and legs, the Johnny Appleseed of tech sent her a new iPad.
He was a baal tzedakah, a master of charity, and lived his life by the most important line in our holy texts: Justice, justice, thou shalt seek. The line comes from the Torah, specifically the Book of Deuteronomy, chapter 16, verse 20. Go look it up.
Most New Yorkers know Lerner from Tekserve, the independent Macintosh computer store he cofounded in Chelsea and helped to run for close to 30 years. Over the course of that time the business grew from occupying half of his partner Dick Demenus’ loft to a cavernous 25,000-square-foot storefront on West 23rd Street.
After news of Lerner’s passing reached them, former Tekserve employees and customers all over these United States shared memories of Lerner the mensch online. Former Tekserve workers thanked Lerner for being such an uncommon boss. And not just because he and Demenus provided health insurance and free lunch to their employees.
One Tekserve alum recalled that when his father passed away, Lerner offered to cover his airfare to North Dakota to spread the man’s ashes. Another who now runs a store in Scranton, PA wrote: “He taught me more about business than anyone.” A former Tekserve customer praised Lerner for dispensing advice on the NY Macintosh Users Group (NYMUG) bulletin board before the web existed. Another remembered that Tekserve printed and gave away the booklets Lerner wrote with answers to Frequently Asked Questions about keeping a Mac running.
Perhaps Lerner’s Tekserve partner Demenus put it best in a poem he wrote and posted on Facebook — “So many of us have counted on you for so much.”
Lerner and Demenus ran Tekserve as a capitalist enterprise — in 2011, the store had $100 million in revenue from sales and services — but the impact of their years at WBAI was apparent in the diversity of Tekserve’s workforce.
In the 1970’s, WBAI was housed in a church where it became home to a bunch of Jewish troublemakers. Bob Fass, who helped start the Yippies, referred to his radio audience as “The Cabal.” Margot Adler, the granddaughter of Austrian psychotherapist Alfred Adler, went to Mississippi to register African-American voters during the civil rights movement. And the Yeshiva of Flatbush graduate Paul Fischer anchored the station’s legendary Vietnam War summary before moving on to write for Dan Rather at CBS.
In 1969, Lerner dropped out of an elite private school on the Upper West Side and joined the fun at WBAI. He was 16 at the time. He and Demenus worked out of the tiny engineering office at the church which was identified by a sign that read “Department of Redundancy Department.” Back then, the only thing to indicate that Lerner was another troublemaker was the letter of reprimand sent to his parents from the management of the Peter Cooper Village housing complex. Young David was cited for unauthorized use of a water gun on the premises. The framed letter hung on the wall of his Manhattan apartment many years later.
There is no doubt that there are some who feel that it was a subversive act to run a profitable business like Tekserve and treat your workers like they were family.
Derek Davis, who started the pro audio division at Tekserve and is now the head archery coach at Columbia University, described Lerner as “the most honest and fair person” he has ever worked for. The day Davis came into the store for an interview Lerner hired him on the spot.
“It was years later,” Davis wrote on Facebook, “that I figured out that David wasn’t hiring workers. He was hiring family members.
David Lerner sent financial support to an eclectic assortment of non-profits. He contributed to the Hebrew Free Loan Association and, it turns out The Forward. But his wife Lorren said his favorite charity was the Catholic Worker, which may seem an odd entity for a Jew to support.
But Lerner knew that the Catholic Worker fed, sheltered and clothed the poor less than a mile away from his West Village home.
A memorial for David Lerner will take place on Dec. 8 at Poster House, the museum that now occupies Tekserve’s home on West 23rd Street.
When a Jew like David Lerner leaves us, it is customary to say May his memory be a blessing.
The expression comes from the Book of Proverbs 10:7. Go look it up.
