“Open your mind,” said George Bockl. “If you don’t keep your mind active, it atrophies; and that’s what I try to do. It’s a little harder now, but it’s very rewarding.”
Bockl said this to The Chronicle (issue of Oct. 22, 2004) on the occasion of the publication of a new book, one of ten he wrote during his life.
But authorship is not how he made his living and fortune. As the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel recounted in its obituary article in the April 5 issue, Bockl, 98, who died in his Fox Point home on April 3, was a real estate developer who created numerous commercial and residential buildings around the city.
Four of his books are about his profession. Victor Christianson of New York City described these books on the bookselling Amazon.com Web site as “simply the best of the best, superb. They walk you through developing properties, using numbers, in a way few other books do. The author is a man of great decency and honesty and his way of dealing with people is heartwarming and a model for us to follow.”
But Bockl, who grew up an Orthodox Jewish immigrant, was as much a spiritual seeker as a successful businessman.
His other books had such titles as “God Beyond Religion” (1988), “Where Did We Come From and Where Are We Going? In Search of a Road to Universal Spirituality” (2000), and “Our New Spiritual Challenge” (2004) the book he discussed with The Chronicle in 2004.
From his explorations, he distilled “The Five Cosmic Principles that Define My Life” and set them down in “Where Did We Come From…”:
• “My human experiences are not an illusion, as some mystics claim…”
• “My soul is the real me…”
• “Evolution is the vehicle for my soul’s progress…”
• “Reincarnation is cyclical wisdom operating in the universe…”
• “God — the constant, creative Cosmic Energy — is the Universal One Life in which all else has its existence…”
Smuggled in a haywagon
Bockl’s life was a long physical as well as spiritual journey. He was born in Russia and was eight when the Russian Revolution brought the Communists to power.
In “Where Did We Come From…” he wrote about how he and his mother “escaped Russia in 1920 by crossing the border into Poland in a smuggler’s haywagon.”
His father had already come to the U.S., and the family settled in Milwaukee. “The experience of learning a new language and finding a niche in a strange land was as agonizing emotionally as was dodging death physically,” Bockl wrote in the book.
He graduated from North Division High School and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He wanted to be a professional writer; he did some freelance journalism, tried to run a magazine, and wrote an unpublished novel about the Russian Revolution.
In 1938, after “three agonizing years in which I couldn’t find employment,” he walked into the office of a small real estate brokerage firm and asked to work selling homes on commission. He discovered he had a talent for it, and by 1939 had started his own firm.
His business activities bore abundant fruit in the post-World War II housing boom. “By 1950, I had become wealthy beyond my wildest expectations,” he wrote.
“But then something traumatic occurred in the form of two radical transformations in my mind: my Orthodox religion lost its salt, and, more drastic, an ennui set in that sapped my desire to add new layers of success to my life. It was like wandering in a fog.”
That led him to the spiritual explorations that eventually resulted in the books and in his daily meditation practice.
According to “God Beyond Religion,” he donated hundreds of thousands of dollars during his lifetime to both Jewish and non-Jewish causes, “much of it toward helping break down walls between religions.”
He is preceded in death by his wife, Mildred (nee Davidoff), died in the 1990s; and one of his children, son Robert. He is survived by daughters Bonnie (Leon) Joseph and Judy Bockl; four grandchildren; and five great-grandchildren.
Graveside services were held at Spring Hill Cemetery on April 6.
The family suggests memorial contributions to the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, 333 Seventh Ave., New York, N.Y., 10001-5004; and the COA Youth and Family Centers, 909 E. North Ave., Milwaukee, Wis., 53212.
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