Chicago Icon #3: Art Petacque

Art Petacque

     I might never have heard the name "Abraham Lincoln Marovitz," whose life brought us Monday's and Tuesday's icons, were it not for Art Petacque, the unofficial mob reporter at the Sun-Times, back when our staff was deep enough to have such a thing. So it's natural to feature him next, while I'm on taking time off from the paper, doing what I normally do on vacations: working.
   Reading this again after many years, two omissions stand out. First, I can't believe I didn't mention the pride Art took at giving mobsters their colorful nicknames—John "No Nose" DiFronzo lingers in memory, as well he would—and that if you look at one photograph of the crime scene of the 1955 Schuessler-Peterson killings that the Sun-Times splashed across their pages, sickeningly graphic by today's standards, there is a rumpled figure in a raincoat clomping around the naked bodies of the boys: Art Petacque. 

     Art Petacque was a police captain when he needed to be a police captain, and a doctor when he needed to be a doctor. He could be a burglar, too, if necessary, slipping into a basement window to snatch a photo for a story.
     "He was the ultimate go-to guy," said former Sun-Times Editor in Chief Ken Towers. "When you needed the story and needed it fast, Art never let you down. He always came through. He was a classic reporter, of the old school."
     Mr. Petacque, who received a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting at the Chicago Sun-Times, died Wednesday at Northwestern Memorial Hospital. He was 76.
     He was a colorful presence from a vanished age, with wild, unkempt eyebrows and a soggy cigar, drawing scraps of paper and matchbooks out of his pockets, reading notes on the doings of mobsters and madams. A reporter, not a writer, he gathered facts for stories that were written by others.
     "Art Petacque was a classic Chicago character, and that was his charm," said Metro Editor Don Hayner.
     In an era when Chicago had four major newspapers and fierce competition for scoops, Mr. Petacque was relentless. Every colleague had a story of him placing a call and identifying himself as a detective, or the coroner.
     Or the time he called a mob restaurant hangout, told them the police were on the way for a raid, then strolled in the deserted place to swipe a photo he wanted of a gangster hanging behind the bar.
     "He was an aggressive reporter; he screwed me out of a lot of stories," said former colleague Jim Casey. "He had contacts on both sides of the fence, law enforcement and the outfit. That's what some of the talk was."
     Mr. Petacque was born in Chicago. His father was the second Jewish captain the Chicago Police Department ever had. He went to Austin High School and played football, then attended the University of Illinois.
     In 1942, Mr. Petacque became a copy boy at the Chicago Sun, one of the precursors to this newspaper. He got his big break in 1944, covering the mob hit on Ben "Little Zukie" Zuckerman, and organized crime remained his specialty for the rest of his career.
     "He was never threatened by the mob," said his brother, Gerald Petacque. "People respected him."
     Mr. Petacque once brought a wife-killer to justice, tracking down a key witness, then arranged for another killer to give himself up in 1962. He forced a New York firm to back out of a Chicago real estate deal by revealing its mob connections. He covered the Gacy murders, the disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa, the kidnapping of Patty Hearst.
     In the Summerdale police scandal, when Mayor Daley and Police Commissioner Timothy J. O'Connor had a private meeting that led to O'Connor's resignation, Mr. Petacque had the dramatic details.
     Unable to get close to John F. Kennedy during a 1960 campaign visit to Chicago, he persuaded the manicurist at the Drake to pepper the candidate with questions while she did his nails.
     Mr. Petacque received the Pulitzer Prize, along with the late Hugh Hough, in 1974 for a series of stories implicating convicted robber Francis L. Hohimer in the 1966 slaying of the teenage daughter of Sen. Charles Percy.
     In the old-style division of duties, Mr. Petacque was the reporter, and Hough was the writer. When news of the Pulitzer hit the Sun-Times newsroom, Hough was out and Mr. Petacque was asked—so the story goes—to express his emotions.
     "I wish Hugh were here to tell you how I feel," he said.
     Mr. Petacque also won a local Emmy for his TV reporting for Channel 7, and numerous other awards. When he retired in 1991, the North Avenue Bridge was renamed in his honor.
     "He had so much to teach today's generation of reporters," Towers said. "About aggressiveness. About persistence, about making his editors look good and his paper look good. . . . He made news interesting, and he made it lively and exuberant. His whole life was news. He was one of a kind. There will never be another Art Petacque—his name will live forever."
     Survivors include his wife, Regina; daughter, Susan Block; son, William, and two grandchildren.
     Services are 10 a.m. Friday at Piser Chapel, 5206 N. Broadway. Burial will follow at Memorial Park Cemetery, Skokie.
      —Originally published in the Sun-Times, June 7, 2001

Chicago Icon #2: Mickey Curtin

     One practical aspect of writing advance obituaries is that you learn so much, knowledge that can be put to good use while the subject is still alive. Because I wrote Jane Byrne's obit, I knew when she would turn 80 (or, rather, when she CLAIMED she would turn 80; later I learned Byrne had subtracted a year from her age) and could celebrate the alleged milestone on its supposed date, a column that led to further honors coming her way while she was still around to enjoy them. 

    Of course, there can be downsides. Having written yesterday's post, a 2001 obituary on Judge Marovitz, years ahead of time, I knew about the 70-year love affair with his secretary, Mickey Curtin. So when she died in 1997, I was ready to tell her story, though it took some quick thinking. 

    The paper had a policy of obituaries being read to the next of kin. So after I wrote Curtin's, about her life and her relationship with the judge, I phoned her brother, the priest, and read it to him. He was not happy. Scrambling, I said, in essence, "You know, the judge is really her next of kin. I should have phoned him." But between the time I hung up, and found Marovitz's number (in the phone book, if I recall) and called him, the brother had already reached him. "I respected her family's wishes for 70 years," Marovitz explained (though I'm not sure why; he had told the story to the Tribune, which printed it three years earlier, though I didn't know it at the time).
     I didn't want to hurt the judge, or the Curtin family, though they seemed wrongly embarrassed by the relationship. But I didn't want to lose the story either.

    "How about this?" I suggested to Marovitz. "I'll run her obituary, but as a column, and won't use any names. That way, nobody who doesn't already know will find out." He agreed. After it ran, Judge Marovitz kept the column below folded in his wallet, and would take it out at parties and show people. A very rare obituary that doesn't include the name of the deceased. I suppose it could be criticized as minimizing a woman's life by viewing it through the lens of her male counterpart. But it didn't seem so in the late 1990s. At least not to me then.
   This originally ran under the headline: "Piety separated them; love kept them together"

     A man and a woman met in Chicago 70 years ago and fell in love.
     I'm not going to tell you their names, much as I'd like to. Because even after the decades, even though the woman died this past Monday and was 93 years old, seeing their names in the paper would upset some of her family members.
     So out of sympathy for them, the grieving family, no names.
     Still, the story should be told. Because a marvel shouldn't be allowed to pass, unheralded. And frankly, the tale doesn't need names. Enough that they were real people. Enough they fell in love. Enough they stayed in love, in a world that at times seems designed to thwart love at every turn.
     Despite opposition, this couple stayed in love for most of the century.
     Think of them as the man and the woman.
     The man was a go-getter, a scrappy former boxer. Some friends watched him get the tar beaten out of him in the ring one night and urged him to become a lawyer, so he did, scrabbling up the ladder.
     This was in the 1920s.
     She was born on the South Side and was 24 years old when he hired her to be his secretary.
     They fell in love.
     But there was a problem. The man is Jewish, a product of the Maxwell Street ghetto. And the woman was Irish Catholic. That was a huge deal then; it can still be a big deal now. It may be why you're reading a story with no names.
     He came to call her his own "Abie's Irish Rose," from the hit play of the 1920s about a Jewish husband and his Irish Catholic wife and the world of grief caused by their families and their hatreds. The play is forgotten now, but it was the most popular piece of theater of the decade, playing thousands of performances over five years.
     It was a fluffy bit of comedic nonsense, and of course ended happily. But in real life, there was to be no happy marriage for this man and this woman. Her family wouldn't dream of it. And his family? He adored his parents—adores his parents still, to this day, in a way that you just don't see much. They were Orthodox Jews, and he could never go and marry a Catholic girl, out of respect for them, even after they were dead.
     So no marriage. But that did not keep them from being happy and forging their own sort of marriage, a marriage of the heart.
     They were a fixture together, working side-by-side during the day, hitting the restaurants and nightclubs at night; it was the era of elegant night spots and swank dance bands, and they took it all in. They had many friends.
     "She was a charming, lovely person and a complete lady," said one of them. "He worshipped that lady, and she obviously was deeply in love with him."
     While half of married people can't seem to find it in their hearts to stay together, these two, unmarried people, did.
     Decades passed. The man went to fight in World War II as a Marine in the Pacific, where he was wounded. The woman raised three children—the children of a sister who died. He rose as a respected member of his profession and she stayed by his side, her entire life, helping him, in the shadows.
     Not subservient, though. She was, after all, Irish, and told him what she thought. He was, after all, a lawyer, and liked to hear himself talk. After a particularly windy speech before a crowded auditorium, she told him that he "missed two chances to shut up." And he was smart enough to love her for that, too, and it became a story he always told to cut himself down to size.
      The decades rolled by. Even though the thought of unmarried people being together lost its ability to shock or even surprise, this man and this woman observed the niceties of a bygone age. At hotels they took separate rooms. Aboard ship, separate cabins. Dignity was maintained.
     "The love of his life," said a relative.
     He lived alone. She lived with another sister. Eventually, his family came to welcome her.
     "She was part of our family, at every one of our celebrations," said the relative. "I don't think it would have been any different if they were married or not. She was part of us. . . . She was just a wonderful person. Quiet, but very warm, sincere, and with a great deal of substance to her. A very caring person."
     When she got old, and got sick, over the last few years, he made sure she was taken care of. He is old now, too, but still vital. He paid for everything. There was no piece of paper. There had been no vows. They weren't, as it turned out, necessary.
      Even toward the end, when she was fading and didn't know who he was when he visited or that someone had been there after he left, he still went to see her, as often as he could.
     The visits always upset him—for days after, he would be subdued and sad. A friend asked him why he continued to go, when it was taking so much out of him and apparently wasn't doing anything for her.
     "I have to," the man said. "I love her."

      —Originally published in the Sun-Times, October 12, 1997

Chicago Icon #1: Abraham Lincoln Marovitz

Abraham Lincoln Marovitz, left, swears in Richard J. Daley
as mayor in 1955. Watching are Adlai Stevenson (center left)
 and former mayor Martin Kennelly.

     I was supposed to go to Taiwan Sunday, visiting volcanoes and indigenous peoples. Obviously that didn't happen. But I took vacation this week anyway—I haven't taken any this year, and we've been encouraged to burn through some now, if we can. 
    I first thought to post a photo and a few words each day. But then my younger son—mirabile dictu—asked me about Judge Abraham Lincoln Marovitz. I thought back to this obit, which hasn't seen the light of day in almost 20 years. He was quite the character—in my Chicago book, he comes to my house to perform the wedding ceremony for my brother. This was the first in-depth obit I worked on, and whetted my appetite for those to come, which I will feature this week. Perhaps the most astounding thing is its length: over 2400 words. A different era.

     Judge Abraham Lincoln Marovitz, a beloved fixture on the Chicago political and social scene from the Roaring '20s to the present day, and a close friend and early supporter of Richard J. Daley's, died of kidney failure Saturday at his North Side home. He was 95.
     "Abe Marovitz is a Chicago icon," U.S. District Chief Judge Marvin E. Aspen said Saturday in a written statement. "The history of 20th century Chicago could not be written without the story of Abraham Lincoln Marovitz, whose lifetime of achievement as a patriot, politician, lawyer, judge and humanitarian spanned the 1900s."
     Judge Marovitz was a savvy, behind-the-scenes power broker in the Democratic Party, who, despite association with many influential and, in some cases, unsavory individuals, enjoyed a long career untouched by scandal.
     He had an inate ability to make friends. Hubert Humphrey was a frequent houseguest, back to the days when he was mayor of Minneapolis. Jimmy Durante and Sophie Tucker were also close to the judge.
     But he is perhaps best known for his friendship with the elder Daley. He was one of the few politicians welcomed into Daley's Bridgeport home, and as a judge he swore Daley into office eight times, six as mayor.
     "Our friendship has withstood the test of time and change," Judge Marovitz said the day he swore in Daley for the last time. "To use an old Irish word, 'shalom.' Good luck and God bless you."
     Daley's sons called Judge Marovitz "Uncle Abe."
     "Abraham Lincoln Marovitz was a fine jurist, a well-known personality and a personal friend," Mayor Daley said in a statement Saturday.
     Judge Marovitz was born Aug. 10, 1905, in Oshkosh, Wis. His mother, Rachel, named him after the 16th president because she was touched by stories of Lincoln she heard at a settlement house lecture in New York City. But the tale that Judge Marovitz loved to tell is that his mother heard that Lincoln was shot in the temple, and so she thought he was Jewish.
     His father, Joseph, moved the family to the teeming Jewish ghetto around Maxwell Street on the West Side when Judge Marovitz was 5.
     Judge Marovitz adored his parents in a way that did not fade with time. He not only displayed their oil portraits prominently in his office for his entire life, but wore cuff links featuring their photos. He praised them constantly.
     "My mother and father came to this country from Lithuania, met, married and raised five children," he told a group of immigrants he was swearing in as citizens. "My father, a tailor, never learned to write English, but he was the most honest man I ever met in my life. My mother, who did not learn to read or write English till she was 70 and who ran a candy store, was the kindest."
     To help the struggling family of seven (he had two brothers and two sisters), Judge Marovitz went to work at an early age: selling newspapers, delivering telegrams and carrying groceries.
     He attended Jefferson Elementary and Medill High School, and became active in Boys Brotherhood Republic, a youth government. A speech he gave to the group impressed Levy Mayer, a senior partner in the law firm Mayer, Meyer, Austrian & Platt—now Mayer, Brown & Platt. Levy Mayer gave the young man his card and told him to look him up if he ever needed a job.
     He did, some time later, only to find that Mayer had died; nevertheless, he persuaded partner Alfred S. Austrian to hire him to work in the law library.
     Slightly built—he was affectionately known as "Little Abe" by friends—Judge Marovitz was athletic as a young man, fighting as a featherweight boxer at Kid Howard's gym on South Clark Street.
     He and a friend worked up a sparring act to perform at club dinners and parties. At one such gathering, instead of drawing his friend, the future judge drew a real opponent, an Italian steelworker.
     Two lawyers from the firm witnessed the pummeling he received at the hands of the steelworker, and reported it to Austrian, who encouraged Judge Marovitz to go to law school instead of making a living in the ring.
     So well-regarded was Judge Marovitz at the firm that Austrian lent him the $60-a-semester tuition to attend Chicago-Kent College of Law. He was 16 years old, and attended law school without having spent a day in college.
     He graduated in 1925 at age 19, but had to wait nearly two years until he took his bar exam, because Illinois law forbade anyone under 21 from becoming a lawyer.
     Again benefitting from the intervention of his mentors, he became an assistant state's attorney for Cook County—at 22, the youngest person to hold that position.
     Judge Marovitz worked there five years, until 1932, when a new state's attorney took office and fired him. But not before he met a young Dick Daley, then a City Council clerk.
     He then teamed up with his brothers Sydney and Harold in private practice, representing labor leaders and a rogues' gallery of some of the most notorious gangsters of the day.
     His clients included Gus Winkler, believed to be a machine gunner in the St. Valentine's Day Massacre, North Side boss Ted Newberry, syndicate gunman Murray Humphreys and confidence man Willie Bioff.
     His association with gangland figures—which was to continue throughout his life—led to the inevitable rumor that he was somehow under mob influence, a charge belied by his spotless judicial record.
     "I've never taken a dime in my life," he once said. "I've never done a dishonest thing in my life. People call me up for a favor, and they can get it because that's the way I operate. But nobody can ever say I've ever done anything underhanded."
     He did learn to be less chummy with his criminal clients after an FBI agent read to him a transcript of a phone tap, in which the young attorney greeted Winkler with a breezy, "Well, what bank did you hold up today?"
     He was also close to the famed West Side boss Jacob Arvey, who helped Judge Marovitz get elected to the Illinois Senate in 1938—he was the first Jew to serve in that body. Judge Marovitz, remembering the prejudice he suffered in his youth, helped introduce the first Fair Employment Act, barring discrimination on the basis of race, religion or sex.
     In Springfield, he strengthened his friendship with fellow senator Daley. The two—part of the Democratic minority—took long walks together, avoiding the high life of corrupt Springfield politics.
     Judge Marovitz left the Senate in 1943 to join the Marines, as a private, predicting in his farewell speech to the Senate that Daley would be elected mayor after the war.
     Though color-blind and 38 years old, he pulled some strings to be sent overseas, and saw combat, taking part in the invasion of the Philippines.
     He was wounded but refused the Purple Heart. "I got a scratch, and some guys were without limbs," he said later.
     After the war, Judge Marovitz was involved in nudging Adlai Stevenson—who had used his influence to get Judge Marovitz into combat—toward his eventual role as a two-time presidential candidate, introducing him to Arvey when the three were in New York for the 1947 World Series.
     Judge Marovitz remained in the Senate until 1950, when he was named a judge in the Cook County Superior Court; he was sworn in by his old friend, Dick Daley, then the new county clerk. He served there until 1963, with a hiatus in 1958-59, when he served as chief justice of the Cook County Criminal Court.
     In 1963, President John F. Kennedy named him to the federal bench, as a judge in the Northern Illinois District, perhaps the last federal judge to serve without an undergraduate college degree.
     Judge Marovitz was involved in many noteworthy federal cases in Chicago—presiding over trials of Jeff Fort, head of the P. Blackstone Nation, later the El Rukn gang.
     The corruption trial of Ald. Paul T. Wigoda (49th), held in his courtroom in 1974, was a typical example of both Judge Marovitz's fidelity to friendship and his ability not to let it interfere with his judicial judgment.
     When Wigoda appeared before Judge Marovitz to plead innocent to charges of extorting $50,000, Judge Marovitz startled onlookers by reminiscing about a time during World War II when he was a Marine Corps sergeant in the Philippines and Wigoda was a Navy medical corpsman.
     "I got some shrapnel in my arm, and you removed it," Judge Marovitz told the courtroom. "It was painful for me that day, but I must confess that this is far more painful."
     The Chicago Council of Lawyers asked Judge Marovitz to bow out because of his history with Wigoda, but he refused, remaining in the trial and sentencing Wigoda to a year in prison after a jury found him guilty.
     Even the elder Daley was not immune when the law was at issue. When his administration in 1972 balked at notifying city employees of the Shakman Act, outlawing patronage abuses, Judge Marovitz angrily threatened to jail Daley and other top Democratic officials unless they complied.
     "Tell your client, unless they want to take a vacation in the County Jail, they better comply with this order," he told city lawyers. He later recused himself from the case.
     While he never married, he had a close relationship for nearly 70 years with Mickey Curtin, his former secretary. She died in 1997.
     Judge Marovitz was a fixture at concerts, benefit dinners and theatrical openings. Legendary feather dancer Sally Rand was his date at the opening of the Palmer House's Empire Room in 1933.
     He had friends among Hollywood entertainers. He was particularly close to comedian Joe E. Lewis. Lewis stayed at Judge Marovitz's home whenever he was in Chicago.
     Judge Marovitz was friends with the unknown as well. He could hardly walk through the lobby of the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse or the Standard Club without pausing to shake hands, squeeze forearms, hug and kiss his many acquaintances. He had an affection for homilies, and friends became vastly familiar with his favorites.
     "He was one of those people who, if you walk down the street, you probably couldn't get very far because he knew everyone on the block," said Frank Mayer, a longtime partner at Mayer, Brown & Platt, whose grandfather was the lawyer impressed by the teenage Marovitz. In recent years Judge Marovitz, a senior judge, stopped hearing cases, but would preside over marriages and the swearing-in of immigrants, a duty he relished. Judge Marovitz claimed to have sworn in more new Americans than any other jurist.
     Judge Marovitz was honored when Plymouth Court from Jackson to Van Buren was renamed Abraham Lincoln Marovitz Court. There is also a forest with 200,000 trees in Israel that bears his name.
     Those seeking favors, or advice, or just to talk, would journey to Judge Marovitz's office in the Federal Building, where they found a veritable museum of Lincoln memorabilia, with dozens of images of the judge's namesake, from original autographed letters and bronze busts to needlepoint portraits and children's drawings.
     Walls of an inner office were jammed with autographed photos of presidents, prime ministers and popes, not to mention senators, poets and singers—the famous and powerful of the last half-century.
     Survivors include one niece, Adrienne Garman; four nephews, Sanford, James, William and Robert Marovitz, and several grand-nephews and nieces.
     The funeral and burial will be private. The federal courts will host a memorial at 2 p.m. April 3 at the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse.
     The family is asking memorials to be made to the McDermott Foundation and the two congregations where Judge Marovitz was an active member, Congregation Anshe Sholom B'nai Israel and Chicago Loop Synagogue.
     In August 1994, he was asked to say a few words eulogizing Cecil Partee—words that apply just as easily to himself.
     "Even long life ends too soon—but a good name lives forever," he said. "The hurt is awful, but never to have known him would be a greater loss."
      Contributing: Adrienne Drell, Kate N. Grossman

      —Originally published in the Sun-Times, March 18, 2001,

Bad cats

Casper, in a characteristic setting.

     No, I do not like cats.
     There, I said it.
     In my defense, cats do not like me. Though that is nothing special; cats don't seem to like anybody, as far as I can tell. Oh, some people think their cats like them. But they're wrong.
     So, yes, I do not like them in return. Never have.
     Which is odd for a man who has been living with cats continually for more than 30 years.
     My wife, however, loves cats. And I love her—happy Mother's Day, honey! Hence the cats.
      First Anna and Vronsky, the two cats my wife-to-be adopted at the Chicago Anti-Cruelty Society—or as we called it, "The Cruelty Society."
      We had them for nearly 20 years. Proof that this is not a stressful environment for the cats, my attitudes notwithstanding. It isn't as if they can read my mind. Okay, they probably can, but they don't care. Not caring is a basic feline trait. While me, I have to care. And feed and pay for all their special scientific urinary tract kibble and little boutique baglets of treats and occasional cat toys and frequent visits to the vet.
      For which they are grateful not at all.
      I even make a stab at delivering an occasional stroke or pat or whatever you're supposed to do with cats. I try to say something encouraging. "Hello there, Mr. ... ah .... cat." A cheery thought. Anna could chase a string—the elastic gold cord from a Marshall Field's gift box. I remember pulling the cord back, firing it across the room, and allowing Anna to dutifully retrieve it. So there I was, playing with the cat. What else do they—or you—want?
     Anna and Vronsky gave way to Natasha and Gizmo, our current cats. Both quite old now themselves. The cat population leapt by 50 percent at the end of March with the addition of Casper, seen in a characteristic moment above. Our younger son's kitten, purchased, I believe, because ... well, I have no idea. To spite us.
     At least Gizmo and Natasha are old. They spend 23 and a half hours a day on our bed. Which I suppose makes it their bed. They do let us slip into the spaces where they're not, which is kind of them. Casper is constantly bolting around the house, racing across the floor, up the walls. There'll be a crash—such as a potted plant sprayed across the oriental rug. If I tried that, the pot would bounce. But shattering a sturdy raku pot is easy for a cat.
     "Get the vacuum!" my wife cried to the younger boy—it is his cat, after all. And to his credit he slipped over to help, mostly through observation.
     "And a burlap sack! And a weight!" I added, though nobody picked up on it.

Natasha, wishing the man taking the photo would die on the spot.

     Not only must I live with cats, whom I do not like, and who do not like me. But then I must be teased for that perfectly natural and defendable inclination.
    "Dad doesn't like the cats!" one son will say, smirking, with the next thought, "Damn him all to hell" not spoken aloud.
   "Dad doesn't like the cats," the second boy will say, picking up the refrain, shaking his head, in mock or, heck, probably real disgust.
     "I like the cats..." I lie, wanly.
     Or try to, anyway. It is not always easy. Okay, it's never easy. Trying to like them only sets the stage for even greater dislike. When my Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, usually on a stand in the dining room, for ease in consultation during Scrabble, Bananagrams, and other word games, was carelessly left open on the dining room table by my older son, and Natasha perched possessively upon it, staring at me intently, almost daring me to do something about it, which I was too smart to do. I neither reprimanded my son, nor shooed the cat off its pages—a mistake, as subsequent events would demonstrate. She looked handsome there, scholarly, in a hateful kind of way, and I took a photograph, just to show that I can get into the spirit of the thing. Cats! God's creatures and man's friend.
     Shortly after this picture was taken, the cat threw up—by accident, one assumes, though I wouldn't put anything past them—directly onto the dictionary. My wife tried to clean it best she could but ... well, lets say the episode will be plain to anybody consulting Volume II of the Shorter Oxford. I don't see why, when I say, "I do not like cats" that should reflect poorly upon myself. The general reaction should be, "Why you poor man! Those awful cats must have done terrible things for a kind soul such as yourself to dislike them." But nobody says that. I am alone in my own house, outnumbered, six to one.
    "The dog too!" my family pointed out, in unison.
    Right. Make that seven to one.

Texas Notes: Cracker Jack

        If, like me, you woke up this morning looking forward to what EGD Texas Bureau Chief Caren Jeskey has to say, that's testimony to how smoothly she has integrated into our little community. Now if I can just find six more correspondents like her, I can cough into my fist, put on my hat and tuck back into the shadows. Alas, I suspect she is sui generis, a thing unto herself, and the other six days will be my problem for the foreseeable future. Not that we HAVE a foreseeable future. But a guy can dream, right?

     Jane Addams, the mother of social work, is quoted as saying “the good we secure for ourselves is precarious and uncertain until it is secured for all of us and incorporated into our common life.” When I was 19 I started volunteering at Chicago House, in a hospice program for men and women dying of AIDS related illnesses. I was guided there during a class at DePaul University called God, Justice and Social Concern. It was taught by one of the most impressively humble, intelligent, witty and warm men I’ve met thus far in my life, Father James Halstead. Not a religious person myself, somehow I did not mind the required religion classes at DePaul. I dove right in and followed Father Halstead around, taking several classes with him and basking in his presence as often as possible. He had one of those auras that calms you down like a Quaalude might, without the side effects. He used to ride a bicycle around campus with upright handle bars and a basket, and either a gentle smile or a look of deep contemplation on his face, and his cheeks looked like apples. He reeked of goodness and health. I’m now thinking he and Mr. Rogers must have been distant cousins. To fulfill requirements for his classes I found myself bowing with the woman in the basement of a Muslim mosque somewhere off of North Elston, inhaling incense and the sounds of cantors at a Greek Orthodox church in the Gold Coast, and I felt most at home at a little Buddhist temple somewhere in Lincoln Park. I ended up becoming a yoga and meditation teacher after that—practices that have been a part of saving my life.  

    While volunteering at Chicago House I felt it was my duty to do this work. It was the most natural thing in the world to drive over to the near west side hospice house tucked in with all of the other red brick buildings, and find out who needed help that day—a ride to visit family members, company to walk to the neighborhood bodega, or a healthy friend to sit with tired bones and chat or play a game. One of the men asked me to take him out dancing at a club on Clark near Belmont in Chicago’s Lincoln Park neighborhood to celebrate his 34th birthday. He dressed up in a silky red shirt, tight black pants and Kenneth Cole wingtip shoes, and we danced to Chic and Stevie Wonder until he ran out of steam. I drove him home as we laughed like kids at the memory we had just made, talking smack about the man who had the nerve to dis’ him and the beautiful queen with the red lips and stilettos, putting everyone else to shame with her stunning presentation and countenance. When he was admitted to the so-called AIDS Ward at Cook County Hospital I sat next to his bed so he wouldn’t be alone if he woke up. He slipped away. I went to his funeral on the South Side of Chicago and his family greeted me with warm hugs as if I was a part of the family. I still have a thank you card they sent me for helping take care of their man.
     After that I continued to work in social services and loved trying to make this world a kinder and more equitable place. I felt I had a purpose. I worked in a program for drug-using pregnant women and we took care of them and their babies and gave them a chance to get well, and many of them did. One day years later I was walking down the street in Wrigleyville and a tall, robust, dark skinned young man came jogging up to me, “Ms. Caren! It’s me!” I did not recognize who I’d last seen as a chubby school aged boy whose mother was in and out of recovery and domestic violence shelters as she tried to piece her life together. He wrapped me into a bear hug, his friends giggling at the scene, and shared that all these years later his mother was doing very well, a leader in her recovery community in her home town in the South where she had moved. He was also thriving, a true delight. After that I worked with homeless teen moms with mental illnesses and found other roles that allowed me to serve the disenfranchised, of which there were and are many. I taught yoga and meditation and biked all over Chicago, year after year, and felt that I was really doing something.

 I found myself in a hospital job, since that’s where the money (if you can call it that) is for social workers. I proceeded to become the person I never thought I’d be, I swore I would never become, the burnt out hospital social worker with almost no hope left after long days with no thank yous and almost constant pressure and criticism for not working more magic. My career took on a life of its’ own and it seemed there was no getting out of the rut. Maybe I felt some kind of punishing duty in bleeding myself dry, and I missed the memo about self-care coming first. I’d waver between being a health nut and drinking my blues away, I could not find a balance.
     Sometimes I’d sit on the bench outside of the ER, numb and unable to make it any further after a particularly grueling shift where an abusive doctor asked me if I’d gotten my license in a Cracker Jack box when I did not do the unethical things he expected. On one such night a friend happened to call as I sat on the cold mental bench decompressing after work. She instructed me to get up, walk to my bike and get over to her house. I rode the ten miles or so to her cozy Evanston home where I started to come back to life. Friends routinely asked me why I didn’t quit that job, learn how to follow my heart, follow my bliss, do something that I loved. I’d think “and who will pay my bills? What else can I do? This is what I’ve been trained for.”
     In days to come I had to ignore the married nurse whose wife I knew, who would flirt with me and give me unwanted compliments. He’d say racist and classist things to spark my ire and called me the Socialist Worker as an insult. “You know, all of these patients are taking advantage of you. They should all be put on island somewhere so you can take care of the patients who really deserve it.” I ignored him, choosing not to pick this battle. I placed a blank look on my face and asked if the homeless unconscious 20 year old laying in the ICU bed, near death, has had any improvement. Then I walked past the nurse into the patient’s room and began to search his belongings to see if I could find a contact number to call amidst the wet and stained bunches of papers in his tattered bag.
     I finally mustered up the courage to walk away from hospital social work once and for all, and I was able to shape a career that I love once again. With impeccable self-care I enjoy my well-balanced life outside of work. I serve clients who’ve had unimaginable trauma in their lives, and I do it from an abundant wellspring. 

     I’ve come full circle. I started as young and idealistic and supported by fine people such as Father Halstead. Today I am older, wiser and hopeful that I can maintain a good life, and from that I can offer myself to others in a healthy way. I am surrounded by people who are doing good in the world and enjoy life. We prop each other up as needed. The COVID crisis has allowed me to give and receive help in an authentic and real way—the help we give and receive when we realize that we are mortal. As one of my favorite yoga singers Krishna Das says, we are “live on earth for a limited time only.”
     We have lost more lives to COVID-19 in a few months than we did in a span of over seven years due to AIDS related illnesses in the 80s. The Father Halsteads of the world help people lay a foundation of care that enables us to go forward with faith in good works. "The ultimate moral test of any government is the way it treats three groups of its citizens. First, those in the dawn of life—our children. Second, those in the shadows of life—our needy, our sick, our handicapped. Third, those in the twilight of life—our elderly,” said former Vice President Hubert Humphrey in 1976. This still rings true today and so let’s make it happen, together. As my Buddhist teachers say, may we all be well, happy and peaceful and may we remember that we are not alone. 

Let Trump help you learn to be a better person

     A neighbor on Facebook, listing the joys of lockdown.
     “No school shootings,” she begins. “TRAFFIC is gone, GAS is affordable, BILLS extended ...”
     She goes on, quite a bit. Air is cleaner. “The world quieter.”
     The list ends with this confident assertion: “I’m pretty sure this was God’s way of telling us to slow down and focus on what is important!!”
     That old trickster, God. He does have His mysterious ways, doesn’t He? Setting the lives of millions on fire, just so we fortunate few can enjoy the warm glow and toast marshmallows on their burning homes.
     Unlimbering the rhetorical bazooka I always keep conveniently slung over my shoulder, I squinted into the gunsight, seeing the tiny figure of my neighbor, smiling over her freshly-coined public wisdom. My finger tensed.
     Then I sighed, lowered my weapon, and decided to demonstrate my wit and humanity in a novel fashion: by saying nothing.
     Sure, I could have archly pointed out that hiding in the basement could be fun, provided you have a comfortable, well-stocked basement. But not everybody does. These are excruciatingly tough times, and if the scythe hasn’t swung in your direction, yet, the least you can do is not crow about it.
     But you can’t scold a joyful person into silent gratitude. Just as you can’t shame a sad one into abandoning their sorrow as insignificant. It’s graduation time. My neighborhood is festooned with college flags, congratulatory signs, balloons, big orange and blue Illini I’s painted on lawns. Online, bursts of milestone festivity, shadowed with a definite sense of loss. No commencement. No prom. It’s not fair! After seeing a few, I considered creating a meme: a soft sepia passport photo of Anne Frank, with the tagline, “Not every teen got to go to prom.” That’ll show ‘em. Think of the retweets! Dozens!
     I also held that back. I’m not the coronavirus mullah, wandering cyberspace in my long white beard and black robes, taking a reed switch to the legs of anybody who dares be too happy or too sad. I don’t want to show up at the virtual wake for high school life and castigate the mourners.

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The pancakes aren't the important part

     Sophomore season is usually toughest. So as satisfied as I was with my first effort for Northbrook Voice two months ago, I'm even more pleased that my second essay, appearing in the current issue, hits the sweet spot, that narrow intersection between sentiments the village of Northbrook will happily publish, and prose I'd be glad to sign my name to. 
    The highlight was talking to Village Presbyterian Church's Rev. Lundgaard, who instantly grasped what I was doing, swung smartly and hit the ball exactly where it needed to go. This was not his first time at bat.
    It helped that the assignment—something about community—coincidently meshed with the COVID-19 crisis, which arrived just as I began work on this. People on my street are hard hit—jobs lost, companies crumbling, kids' bright futures suddenly clouded. But we're keeping our spirits up, mostly, and sticking together as neighbors should. And that's something to be proud of.

     Every February, the Village Presbyterian Church hosts a pancake breakfast run by the Boy Scouts. And every February we walk over, even though we aren’t Presbyterian, my sons were never Boy Scouts, and I’m not particularly fond of pancakes. 

     Why? There are people and fun — two things that often go together. Music, and prizes. The festivities only cost $8 a head, the money goes to charity. Yes, you are expected to eat pancakes, but nothing’s perfect. 

     You run into old friends and make new acquaintances. The Village President pours you a cup of coffee. You immerse yourself in your community, which may be the most important-yet-routinely-neglected aspect of our lives. Few people go a day without brushing their teeth, or a week without a shower. But they’ll let a month slip by and never deviate between work and home, with the occasional quick detour into a store or restaurant thrown in for variety’s sake. Or two months. Or six. 

     At least that was the case before the COVID-19 crisis seized Northbrook, along with every other place on Earth. Suddenly even those small dips into public life were off the table. We couldn’t sit for 10 minutes in Starbucks and silently drink a cup of coffee and glance at the person at the next table. It’s as if fate had sent us to our rooms like naughty children, to think about the importance of interconnection. A fact of life that some of us never stop thinking about.

     “We talk about community all the time,” said Rev. Spencer Lundgaard, senior pastor of Village Presbyterian Church. “The heart of the church is this notion of belonging to one another. That is so important. When we are at our best is when what we do is through relationships, when we are bound together. I’m better off because I’m with you; you’re better of because you’re with me. Something incredible, something beautiful takes place.”
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