When my dad died of cancer in a Philadelphia hospital room in 1991, sitting on the reading table next to his bed was an open copy of “Patrimony: A True Story,’’ Philip Roth’s memoir about the life and death of his tough-minded father.

The connection between my father and Roth was far stronger than a typical reader-writer relationship. Although my dad was 14 years older than Roth, they grew up in the same Weequahic neighborhood of Newark, New Jersey, went to the same high school and were both descendants of Jewish refugees from Eastern Europe.

They shared a deep, visceral bond with their Weequahic roots, one that Roth – who died Tuesday at the age of 85 — mined in so many of his great novels. My father left Newark as a young man in the early 1940s and never returned, but he spoke about his old neighborhood with great fondness even though his family – he had three brothers – struggled to make ends meet after his father squandered the grocery business fortune he inherited.

I met Roth about 10 years ago when I was a movie critic and entertainment editor for Bloomberg News. He was at Bloomberg’s New York headquarters for a television interview and afterward I cornered him and mentioned that my father had gone to Weequahic High School. It was like opening a floodgate because Roth then poured out a litany of names and places to see if, despite the generational divide between him and my father, there was any direct connection.

Though I recognized many of his references, the only person he mentioned that I knew much about was Longie Zwillman, the legendary Jewish mobster from Newark who was known as the Al Capone of New Jersey. I’ve always been fascinated by the mob, and Roth told me some colorful stories about Zwillman and his gang.

I don’t know if my dad ever finished reading “Patrimony,’’ which was the last gift I ever gave him. I hope so. Newark has changed dramatically since my father’s childhood, but his loving memories of the city never did.