OW-Memories

Final View About Jim I have shocking and sad news about Jim. Jim wrote this on Tuesday Dec. 17, 2024: I fell a month ago and broke my right elbow and right femur.  Just as I thought I was ready for another heroic comeback, my medical situation went south.  Surging bad pain in the arm…

                                                      Graduate School      We’d been living in Chicago, Gaynette and I, for a year, in a Rogers Park apartment, on the northern edge of the city half a block from Sheridan Road, which ran north-south just in from Lake Michigan. Rogers Park, we were told, was an old Jewish area, safe, close to the El…

Early Years at NU       There were ups and downs, successes and failures, and a major foreign excursion packed into the late 60s and early 70s. The two notable items shortly before starting my long tenure at Northwestern were getting the job offer and getting my first child, Julie, who was born in Torrance Hospital…

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…

Almost Mother       Earl and Stella nearly became my parents. There was no fence between our houses and back yards, where Sam lived. Sam, a black Cocker Spaniel who never tired of chasing sticks and balls and having his belly rubbed. My first dog. I was six or seven, I think, when those three moved…