Lucky Jim

      Much of my thinking and writing has centered on the difficulties I experienced as a boy. Mixed in, but not sufficiently emphasized, were the strokes of good fortune, which perhaps might more accurately be termed the acts of kindness and assistance. Let me try to enumerate some of these.

      First was my adoption by my great aunt and uncle, Nanny and Daddy Bill Blairs. Yes, that was serving their needs, I was told later, but more obviously it was rescuing a baby who needed rescuing. And they loved and protected me until they couldn’t.

      My father’s older sister, Ruthie, was close to the Blairs and became my favorite aunt and tried her best, against long odds, to be my protector through my childhood.

      When I was still a little boy, Earl and Stella Cadarette, a young, childless, married couple moved to the house adjacent to ours. Earl became more than a favorite uncle and both of them as well as their cocker spaniel, Sam, became integral to my boyhood. I cannot overemphasize how important I feel they were in my life and how grateful I feel toward them.

      I was fortunate to become a young friend of an old man, Bill Smith, who lived about three doors east of us. I sat with him listening to Detroit Tiger broadcasts and playing pinochle on many, many days, and in the summer helped him in his backyard garden.

      Chuck Hall was my cousin, about six years older, and was nice to me when I was a boy, then became my brother during our adult years. I could not exaggerate how nice a guy and how good a friend to me he was. Best friend in life, really, and best guy I’ve known. How I miss him this past decade.

      Phil and Carl were boyhood friends whom I was lucky to know and spend many hours with. And the Stevens boys were notably kind to me when I was quite young.

      When things fell apart so badly that I was homeless and helpless at age 15 my mother’s older sister, also named Ruth, arranged that I live the final two high school years with a great aunt and uncle of whom I’d never heard and who lived in Ames, Iowa. This was a huge break for me when I most needed one. Those Iowa people, the Spratts, put up with me for those two years.

      A classmate called out to me one day that we could get out of class if we were to take some test. I literally did not know the implications of passing or failing that test, but I did take it and it won for me an NROTC fellowship that made it possible for me to go to USC for my undergraduate degree. I wish that I could recall the name of that classmate because that event was a turning point for me.

      In college there was Len Zagortz, a somewhat hapless fellow, one might say, but a good friend of mine for years.

      When I began grad school at a Naval Reserve meeting I met another USC grad student, in biology, who with his wife, Betty, became a life friend. I could write on and on about those people and how they helped me especially during the time that I was getting past my marriage to Gay.

      In grad school I met Buck, already a Professor at USC, just two years my senior. He became my teacher, my academic model, my closest buddy, and the guy who got me my fine job a NU. I loved that guy, and when he died young, part of me did too.

      There are good reasons for me to be proud of and grateful to my two children, Julie and Dan, for sticking with me through some tough years, then showing the kind of persons that I hoped they would become. And produced those fine grandchildren from whom I derive pleasure now.

      Karen showed up on the NU faculty and a few years later we were married. We have been together for 45 years and she is pretty much my life now. I will always be indebted to her and greatly admiring of what she’s accomplished. Not the least of her gifts have been daughters Erica and Adrienne and their families, with whose families my life has been so much richer.

      I was lucky as hell to have so many fine colleagues at NU, and for the help of some, Ben, Carl, Lee, and maybe others, I am indebted. And so many good, kind, and helpful friends in Evanston and other parts of this world, notably Al, John, Andrea, Michael, and Wallace.

      I’m lucky, too, to spend these final years here in San Diego at the Glen with a load of friendly, helpful, folks.

      Lucky Jim.