Man meets boy he bullied in the 1950s; offers apology

Nearly six and a half decades after punching a Jewish boy in the face at a Toronto public school, Thomas Caldwell, 72, met with Howard Rosen, the victim, on Global Toronto’s The Morning Show.

A few weeks ago, Caldwell offered an apology for his actions in a newspaper classified ad, which appeared in the Canadian Jewish News. The apology quickly went viral.

The text of the ad read: “To Howard Rosen, sorry I punched you at Runnymede Public School in the early 1950s. Tom Caldwell.”

On television, Caldwell added: “What surprised both of us was the explosion in the response of what happened when it went out.”

He explained that he chose to place the message in the newspaper in an effort to clean up a mistake he felt he once made.

“I manage money and I always tell young traders and portfolio managers, ‘if you make a mistake, clean it up and drive on — don’t beat yourself up over it.’ And I do that or I try to do that when I make a mistake interpersonally or anywhere else,” he said.

Moreover, the two took time on the show to come clean about the attack and what happened afterwards.

“Most young kids when you say, “Why did you do something?” they say, ‘I don’t know,’ but I did know in my heart. Howard was different,” Caldwell said.

He added that there wasn’t a big Jewish population at Runnymede Public School where the incident happened.

“I felt this is part of why I did it, and I knew it was wrong right then. I didn’t grow up in an anti-Semitic family by any stretch of the imagination,” Caldwell said.

Rosen, however, wasn’t able to recall much from the situation.

“The whole incident was very, very hazy. It was really just one day in the life of,” he said. “I was just sitting there, and all of a sudden I was in the principal’s office with Tom. I don’t remember ever telling my parents about it, but I think the school contacted my parents.”

The apology via the newspaper ad decades later took Rosen by surprise, but he was happy that Caldwell wanted to apologize.

“I think this is multi-dimensional. I think this has to do with upbringing of children. I think it has to do with mental health. I think it has to do with a lot of different things, ” he added.