Mom and Dad

Mom and Dad, circa 1958.

Writing about my common, uncommon life wouldn't be complete, of course, without telling you about my mom and dad.  We were a common family, in that we aspired to a middle-class, "father knows best" standard of living.  We celebrated birthdays and holidays, had pets, went on vacations, watched television, and rooted for our favorite sports teams like most other people.  My dad was the "bread winner," and my mom ran the home and took care of the kids.  They took us to public school, Sunday school, and various community events.  They did their level best to have a normal, average, modern life, except for one thing.

They were the two most mysterious people I ever knew.

I didn't realize this until I was much older.  A kid only thinks about the present and near future.  What will I get for my birthday?  How will I do on that history test?  Where will we go for our vacation this summer?  When I asked my parents about their lives and got evasive answers, I wasn't curious or confused; I simply accepted it as something they didn't especially want to discuss with me.  I think most kids have parents who love to talk about their families and childhoods.  My parents were secretive about everything.

My father, Gerard Aaron Cowan (or was it Gerard Aaron Cowen or Aaron Gerard Cohen?) was born on September 18, 1908, in New York City.  My mother, Dorothy June Davis (or was it Dorothea June Davis?) was born on June 17, 1912, in Camden, New Jersey (or perhaps in Philadelphia or outside Camden on a farm).  Nothing about my parents was really definite.  Neither one had a birth certificate or a high school diploma they could show me, although they claimed to have graduated from high school.

My parents hid their ages from my sister, Sue, and me throughout their lives.  Probably the biggest reason was that they both had a "past" prior to the marriage to each other.  When I was almost ten years old and my sister almost nine, we were told that we had an older brother, named Mike, who was 19.  Our stunned reaction was to ask, "Well, where is he?"  We were informed that he lived in Detroit and would like to meet us, so we arranged to meet over Labor Day weekend in 1959.  We fell in love with our brother, and he with us.  That quite amazed our parents, who thought we might be overwhelmed by his existence.  Of course, we were not initially told who Mike's mother was or whether there had been a marriage, a divorce, or even a death.  That typified my parents' style of revealing information.  It was given bit by bit, and then subjects were not broached again for long periods of time.

As I found out each piece of information about mom and dad, it was like finding a piece to a very large, complex jigsaw puzzle--one that, at most, could only be half completed.  I think they both hid how remarkable their lives had been, and, in turn, they kept secret how remarkable they were as individuals.  Often I found out something about my mom or dad through old letters or an off-handed comment, and I wanted to exclaim, "Why didn't you tell me this before now?"  But I was young and respected their privacy.

If there was one thing that was common about the lives of my parents, it is that there was a lot of heartbreak and tragedy, and perhaps that is why so much of their lives was kept secret.  I know that's true for many families, but I found it strikingly true about mine.  I think both of their families were greatly impacted by the Depression years, but there were many other causes for keeping their histories secret from the kids.

With the caveat that I can't substantiate much of this biography, here's the fascinating story of my parents, my mom and dad.

[Many of the facts related in this story are based on direct references and allusions found in old family letters.  When my Aunt Bernice died in 1996, at age 86, I found almost 2,000 family letters stored in her Miami condo, including letters I had written to her in the 1950's!  The oldest letters dated back to as early as 1915.  The two sisters both lived in Manhattan for several decades, but they'd write letters to each other, because mailing a letter was cheaper than making a phone call!]

A Brief History of Aaron Gerard (Jerry) Cowan

Many years ago I searched the 1920 census records for my dad's family.  I knew that my dad had grown up in New York City, and his father's name was Abraham Cohen.  In 1920, there were over 300 Abraham Cohens who were "heads of households" in Manhattan!  President Roosevelt had had the 1920 census records transcribed, by family, to 3-by-5 cards, and about half way through the 300 cards, I found my father's name with his parents and two sisters.  The 3-by-5 card cross-referenced a page in the 1920 census, where I found dozens of pieces of information about my dad's family.  I have a copy of those pages.

A small portion of the census information synced with what little my father had told me over the years.  My dad died when I was 19 years old, so I did not have much time to probe for answers about his family.  I knew that his father was named Abraham Cohen, and his mother was Sadye ("Sadie" on the census record).  He had an older sister named Ruth and a younger sister named Bernice.  Two older brothers (Nathan and Monroe) had died before he was born.  Dad's father had immigrated from Russia and was a tailor by trade, and his mother was born in Brooklyn, of German descent, and was a dress designer.

My father had told me that his family lived in a five-story brownstone in Manhattan, and the census address placed them on West 89th Street.  Not only did my dad and his immediate family members live there, but the census lists three other people--a niece named Irma Davis from Austria, a nephew named Ralph Davis from Germany, and a servant named Bertha Jones from Louisiana.  A photo on Google confirms that it was, indeed, a five-story brownstone attached to other such homes.  (It is quite a coincidence that the name "Davis" was prominent in both of my parents' families.)

Even though the hand-written census page has some obvious errors (my aunt was listed as a "son"), I did find out some interesting things about my dad's family, including the fact that they had a 25-year-old servant.  My grandfather immigrated to the U.S. from Russia in 1885, at the age of 9, and was naturalized in 1892.  He worked at Hickson Department Store in Manhattan as a tailor in 1920.  My Aunt Ruth, who was only 18, was listed as a musician who gave private lessons.  (She was actually a pianist who played at Carnegie Hall in the 1930's.)  I suspect that Ralph and Irma were married, although it shows Irma as "single" and Ralph as "married."  Ralph was a physician, and Irma is listed as being a designer of underwear!  My, oh my!  So they had at least three incomes and enough money to rent a five-story brownstone in upper Manhattan.

What's In A Name?

The spelling of my father's surname is a mystery.  The 1920 census record shows the spelling as "Cohen."  I found a signature book from his junior high school graduation in 1922 with the spelling of "Cowen," but I don't know who changed the spelling.  By the mid-1930's, my dad had changed the spelling to "Cowan," in order to avoid anti-Semitism and sound more Irish.  (There is a Cowan's Irish Whiskey from Belfast.)  For decades, different members of dad's family used different spellings of their last name, and the family plot in Bayside Cemetery, Queens, New York, uses the spelling "Cowan" on the individual gravestones and "Cohen" on the granite marker for the family plot.  Even my grandparents' gravestones have the "Cowan" spelling.

My dad's full name is also a mystery.  Never did he mention "Aaron" as being part of his name.  On his gravestone, his sisters used the full name of "Aaron Gerard Cowan," but many other documents I've found, including his own signature, show his name as "Gerard Aaron Cowan" or "Gerard Aaron Cowen."  Do you see my confusion?

Family Wealth and Poverty

The family was obviously wealthy for many years, although I don't know how the wealth was acquired or lost.  They lived in, but did not own, large brownstone dwellings all over New York, but my dad would joke that the family would move whenever the rent came due, indicating they weren't that wealthy when he was young.  One day he arrived home from school for lunch and discovered that the family had moved that morning!  They had forgotten to tell him they were moving, but they picked him up after school that day when they realized their mistake.

Dad in riding boots, circa 1927.

Dad often talked about going to summer camps, and years after he died, I found photos of him as a young man riding horses and wearing riding boots.  The above photo shows him in his late teens or very early twenties.  Throughout his life he was a dapper dresser.  In fact, all of the old photos I've found of the family show them as well-dressed and very stylish.

There are other indications that the family was wealthy in the 1920's.  His mother and older sister, Ruth, traveled to Europe every year for vacations and shopping.  Ruth moved to Paris in 1925, when she was 24 years old, to study piano, and she lived there several years, according to a torrid diary that I found long after she'd died at age 88.  However, there were also hints of poverty in the letters I found.  They were always loaning money to each other and mailing letters across town, rather than using the phone to make calls.

I have been unable to find any reference to a high school, so it's possible dad never finished or even attended one.  He told us that he'd worked as a "runner" on Wall Street for his first job, and I believe he was a teenager doing that, so it's very possible that he quit school to help support the family.  When we visited Wall Street during one New York vacation, he relayed the long-standing joke that the East River is at one end of the short street, and a cemetery is at the other end.  After the 1929 stock market crash, people took advantage of that convenience.

Dad told us few stories about his life as a kid in New York City.  He loved to tell about watching the Yankees play in the 1920's.  He'd get into the game for free by serving as a soft drink vendor until all of his drinks were sold, and then he'd go watch Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig and the rest of Murderers' Row.  He told us that he was a small kid and occasionally got in fights with other kids.  He had a scar above his lip, sustained in a fight with a playground swing.

Chicago and Michigan

I suspect that my dad left New York City after the stock market crash and that the entire family was splitting up by then.  There are vague references in old letters about my grandparents separating when my grandfather moved to San Francisco to be head tailor at the newly-opened Hickson Department Store there.  (I traced Hickson, and it was located half a block off Union Square on Post Street in San Francisco!)  My Aunt Ruth was back from her studies in Europe and evidently moved to San Francisco to be with her father, and Aunt Bernice stayed with her mother in New York.

After being a "runner" on Wall Street, my dad evidently began working in his late teens at a building supply company on Long Island, and that probably lasted until about 1932.  Among the many secrets I've uncovered since 2000 is the fact that dad was married for a very short time when he was young--in 1932.  After that marriage was annulled, he probably thought it was best to move to Chicago for a fresh start.  I know nothing about his first wife--not even her name.

One thing that was such a mystery to my sister and me was that my dad knew Chicago like the back of his hand, whenever we would visit the city from our home town of Rockford, Illinois.  He knew the "second city" as the maze of streets below the downtown streets.  In his car we'd fly down an unobtrusive ramp in midtown and suddenly be in a different world, next to the river.  Finally, when I was about 17 years old, my sister and I asked him how he knew Chicago so well, and he revealed that he'd lived there and driven a taxicab.  No wonder he knew the streets!  We asked him if he'd ever been held up by a gunman, and he responded, "Yes, five times.  Once the guy stole my cab, and they found it floating in the Chicago River the next day."  Stunned silence.

Dad dressed to the nines, in white or tan shoes, circa 1932.

The photo above could be from any year between 1932 and 1938.  I have no idea where it was taken.  Dad was always well-dressed, with stylish clothing and a handkerchief in his pocket.

He never talked about his Chicago days, except for one comment he made while the family was watching McHale's Navy on television in the early 1960's.  One of the sailors on the crew was a well-known comedic magician named Carl Ballantine.  Dad said, "That's an old friend of mine who I knew in Chicago."  In fact, Carl Ballantine, whose real name was Meyer Kessler, invented comedy magic.

Dad mentioned living in Detroit part of his life, so I surmise that he moved from Chicago to Detroit to work.  He was entirely secretive about his years in Detroit, although he did drop the tidbit once that he knew a couple people in the Purple Gang, an infamous mob of bootleggers and highjackers comprised mostly of Jewish men.  Dad was born Jewish but did not practice Judaism at any time in his life, although he always had a lot of Jewish friends.

In the mid- to late-1930's he moved to Grand Rapids, Michigan, where he started Midwest Supply Company, selling building supplies and kitchens.  It is probable that he met his second wife, Isobel, in Detroit, and they moved to Grand Rapids and were married in 1939.  My brother, Mike, was their son.  Dad also opened a Midwest Supply office in South Bend, Indiana, and letters show that Dad split his time between the two cities.  Dad and Isobel divorced in about 1943, and he met my mom in a hotel in South Bend in 1944 or 1945.  They were married April 15, 1946.

In a remarkable story that I've heard from multiple sources, dad had custody of Mike and mom was going to adopt him, because Mike's mother had a serious alcohol-dependency problem, but during a visit to South Bend, Mike's mother kidnapped him and took him back to Michigan.  Rather than subject Mike, who was then about five years old, to a cross-state line custody battle, dad agreed to allow Mike's maternal grandparents to raise him.  Otherwise, I would have grown up with my brother!

Rockford, Illinois

I don't know all of the reasons why dad and mom left South Bend, although letters allude to difficult winters and economic conditions.  Midwest Supply was evidently closed down, and they moved back to New York City temporarily in 1949, when mom was pregnant with me.  For some reason, they decided to move to Rockford, Illinois, to try to raise a family.  If either of my parents was alive, the one thing I'd most want to find out is why they chose Rockford, for they knew no one there.

In fact, I came into the world three weeks ahead of schedule, so I was born in New York City.  Had I been on time, I would have been born in Rockford, as my sister was a year later.  My mom showed me several love letters that she'd received from my dad while he was looking for a house to rent and a job in Rockford.  He described the town as a wonderful place for a family.  Twice he wrote his letter to mom after having attended a Rockford Peaches baseball game that night.  The Peaches were featured in the movie, A League of Their Own.

Dad found a job with Rockford Plumbing Shop, and he was given the go-ahead to open a "division" of the company named Rockford Kitchens.  Occasionally my mom would take us kids to visit my dad at his work.  He was still a stylish dresser, and I was very proud of him.

Dad at his Rockford Kitchens drafting table, smoking a cigarette, circa 1955.

Dad's business card.  I still remember this phone number!

In 1956, dad got tired of working for a boss and started his own kitchen business, Builders Wholesale Supply Company.  I remember having to tear down our very large model train layout in the basement of our house so dad could have an office for his new company.  Sue and I often helped him by putting together catalogues of kitchen brochures that he'd hand out to potential customers.  He established relationships with many manufacturers and sold kitchen cabinets, appliances, and bathroom vanities, at wholesale prices, directly to home builders.  Our "warehouse" was a rented two-car garage down the alley from us.

It was probably in 1958 that dad opened a real office, including a showroom for customers, on the first floor of an old storage building on the south side of Rockford.  Our warehouse was on the third floor of that old building.  In 1960, dad taught me how to keep the company's financial books.  I recorded all of the company's receivables and payables, entered all of the checks he wrote, produced a trial balance, and built an inventory system to keep track of the items we had in stock.  I was eleven years old when I learned the first things about running a business.

From the time I was 13 years old, I always had a summer job working with my dad.  Starting when I was 16, I worked full-time in the summers with him and began saving almost all of my money for college.  I still did the company's books, but I also managed the warehouse, unloaded semi-trucks filled with cabinets, helped in large deliveries (full kitchens), made telephone sales calls, and kept the office tidy.

From 1949 until the summer of 1960, we lived in a small, 2-bedroom bungalow on the west side of town, across the street from a fire station and a huge cemetery.  Next door (and across a vacant lot) was a Seventh Day Adventist Church.  Sue and I would wake up on Saturday mornings to gospel music pouring out of the church windows.  We also lived one block from our grade school, which was extraordinarily good and competitive.  We were given speed reading tests in second grade!

Dad with me and Sue, circa 1951.

I have mostly good memories of our family in the 1950's.  Dad and mom spent a lot of time with us two kids.  My first memory as a child, taken not long after the above photo, was of me and Sue feeding the ducks at the Sinnissippi Gardens pond in Rockford.  The photo below is one of my favorite photos, probably taken as we were leaving for Sunday school or a trip into Chicago.  Notice the gentle break in our trousers--like father, like son.  Dad always dressed up, even when he took me to my first baseball game in 1957.

Dad and me on a cold winter day, circa 1955.

In August, 1960, our family moved to the east side of town, where mom and dad found an available 3-bedroom house to rent.  Our family never owned a home, because we were still fairly poor and had little savings, certainly not enough for a home down payment.  Dad worked very long hours to keep the company afloat, and we probably never had more than two months of savings in the bank.  He was adamant that mom should stay at home and raise the kids, do the cleaning and cooking, and have a nice dress on by the time he arrived home.

In 1962, Dad contracted colon cancer the first time.  He was on a business trip to Andrews, Indiana, when he was stricken ill, and my mom shepherded Sue and me through a harrowing airplane flight in blizzard conditions, from Chicago to South Bend.  After surgery and six weeks recovery time (during which time our dog died!), dad regained his health and returned to work at his company.  It was a bleak period for all of us.

In general, dad was in good health for the next five years, but it was not a happy time for him, for the most part.  He was under constant, immense pressure to keep Builders Wholesale Supply in the black, and he and mom were forever arguing about something.  Because mom chose to stay at home most of the time, he spent a large part of his happy hours just with me and Sue--golfing in the warmer months and bowling in the colder months.  The colon cancer probably returned in 1967, but he did nothing about the symptoms.  He was in the hospital for the latter half of 1968 and died in hospice on December 4, 1968.  I was 19 years old and in my second year of college.

Memories Of Dad

Even though he apparently had not finished high school, dad was a remarkably intelligent man.  In my Meetings With Remarkable People series of essays, I detail five ways that he went out of his way to change the course of my life.  He pushed me to be organized, to work hard, to be analytical, to take on responsibilities, and to treat others in a fair, kind fashion.  In truth, for my whole life with him, I was always in awe of the man.

Here are some of the memories I have of him.

Dad was a voracious reader.  When he was a kid, dad's mother would come to his bedroom late at night to make sure he was asleep.  He hooked up an electrical buzzer next to his bed that was triggered when someone stepped on the last stair step up to his floor.  When the buzzer sounded, he'd hide the book under the covers and turn off the light.  He fooled her for several years by doing that.

When I was very young, I noticed how little time dad spent reading two facing pages of a book, so I asked him how he did that.  (I was always a very slow reader and still am.)  He told me that he had the ability to read two lines at once and "put them together" at the end of each pair of lines.  It was putting his type of dyslexia to good use, I guess.  As he read, I could see what he was doing.  His finger would not go across the page 40 times, but only 20 times, as he concatenated pairs of lines!

Although both of my parents heavily influenced my love of reading, dad introduced me to series of books.  At the age of about 12, he said I could start reading the Perry Mason novels he was reading, so I started those right away.  His influence was probably why I love reading mysteries to this day.

From when I was very young and got books from the neighborhood bookmobile during summers, Sue and I had one hard-fast rule we had to follow: each of us had to read one book a week when we weren't in school.

Dad was an incredible draftsman.  I never asked dad how he learned draftsmanship in designing kitchens, but, as with almost everything, he was probably self-taught.  I first witnessed his drafting skills when I was a little kid and would visit him at Rockford Kitchens.  When he started his own business, I usually drove with him on Sunday afternoons to look for homes that were being built by weekend builders.  When he'd find a partially-built home, he'd approach the homeowner and ask if they had any plans yet for their kitchen and bathrooms.  If they didn't, he asked if they'd like a free quote and some brochures.  Invariably they said yes!

That's when the fun would start for me.  He'd set up his portable drafting table in the middle of the rough kitchen, create a new manila folder for the "job," and he and I would take all of the kitchen measurements as he wrote them down on the back of the folder.  Almost always these were homes in a very rough state; the walls were down to the studs and the floors were plywood--no electricity, no water, no heat.  He always cautioned me, as we entered a rough house, to not fall down any holes or run into any exposed nails!

As soon as we had all of the room's measurements, dad would start on designing the kitchen.  He drew plans in a 3/8-inch scale, using drafting ruler, triangles, circle templates, and a drafting pencil, and his hands were lightning fast!  To the astonishment of the homeowner, dad would be done with the entire kitchen plan in ten minutes.  From the plan he'd fill in a list of kitchen cabinets and appliances on a quote form.  Then for each cabinet he'd call out the size and type, and I would respond with the price from our wholesale price list.  He'd fill in the appliance quotes, and then we'd double-check our work.  To finish the quote, he'd calculate the tax amount (long-hand), sign his name, and make a copy for the builder.  Our copy of the quote and the finished plan would go in the manila folder, which we would keep.

So, within twenty minutes, the builder would have a finished, signed quote and a catalogue of glossy brochures, without ever leaving his new home!  During the winter months, dad and I would often be in our overcoats and snow boots.  During the summer months, he and I often waded through deep mud to get into the house.  Dad always wore a coat and tie.  No other company offered such service, and no other company had a draftsman like dad.  I still have some of his drafting tools and one of his drafting boards.

I took two years of drafting class in junior high school, and dad let me design a few kitchens from rough measurements along the way, but I could never approach his dexterity and skill at drafting.

Dad was a math whiz. It was not a surprise that I majored in math in college, because my dad was a math whiz.  He loved numbers, and he taught me to love numbers.  He may have studied algebra and geometry in school, but I doubt if he went any further than that.  What he taught me over the years was to enjoy numbers and search for shortcuts in my calculations.

While kids were learning to add and subtract in second grade, I was enthralled by magic squares.  Create any grid with an odd (and equal) number of squares in each direction, say 21 x 21, which would have 441 squares.  Start entering numbers, one per square, from 1 to 441 in such a way that all of the columns, rows, and diagonals add up to the same sum!  I don't know how his method always works, but it does, much to the amusement of my second-grade teacher.

When kids were learning their multiplication tables for numbers between 1 and 9 in third grade, dad was teaching me how to multiply any two numbers in the teens, without writing anything down.  The method requires doing two arithmetic operations in your head and then adding the results together.  Let's say you're multiplying 13 and 19.  Here are the steps.

1. Drop the "1" off either of the numbers and add what remains:   13 + 9 = 22 or 3 + 19 = 22
2. Append a "0" on the end of the result and remember it:   220
3. Multiply the units digits for the two numbers and remember it:   3 x 9 = 27
4. Add the two remembered numbers, and that's your answer:   220 + 27 = 247

This method works for any two numbers between 10 and 19.  Never in all my years of math was I taught that shortcut in school, but dad knew it and taught it to me.  Much of what he taught me was never taught in school.  In general, he showed me that there are almost always multiple ways to solve a math problem, and if I want to solve a problem quickly, I should use some common sense in choosing the method I use.  I still take advantage of that approach frequently.

As a quick example, if a problem requires that I get the product of 28 and 30, I don't try to multiply those two numbers in my mind.  I automatically multiply 30 x 30 (which is easy!) and then subtract 2 x 30 (which is also easy!) from that result.  28 x 30 = (30 x 30) - (2 x 30) = 900 - 60 = 840.  Dad taught me to look for shortcuts similar to that.

But he also taught me a few very difficult math operations, such as how to calculate any number's square root.  While other kids were learning long division in fourth and fifth grade, I was calculating square roots of any positive, whole number.  Square root methods look about three times as complicated as long division on paper.  Again, I never learned this technique in any math class.

Neither my dad nor I was surprised when I finished my experimental, self-taught algebra class six weeks ahead of the semester's end in eighth grade.  He taught me math discipline and enjoyment, which I fully applied in that class, much to the surprise of my teacher.

Dad loved model railroads, golf, and photography.  I only remember dad subscribing to two types of magazines in our years together--model railroad magazines and golf magazines.  He was enthralled by the designs of model railroad layouts in the magazines, and so he designed a wonderful layout that we worked on during my early teenage years.  The photo below, as poor as it is, shows a lot of the layout in our basement, with engines, freight cars, bridges, villages, and other features.

Our 17' x 9' model railroad layout (HO gauge), circa 1964.

Not only did we build most of our model freight cars, but all of the switches were wired and operated from a central control board (not shown, to the right).  Dad taught me how to do the electrical wiring, so much of my time "playing with the trains" was spent running wires underneath the table. lying on my back with an electric drill, hammer, and screw driver.

Dad was also an avid golfer.  When I was ten years old, he would take me on golf outings and let me caddie for him.  He was a good but not great golfer, but he really knew how to play.  He talked about Bobby Jones and Gene Sarazen and Sam Snead, so he'd obviously followed golf (and read golf magazines) for many years.  Before he would let me swing a club and hit balls, he made me caddie and learn the rules of etiquette for a year.  I got my own "starter" set of golf clubs when I was eleven, and it quickly became my favorite game.  He was my one and only golf instructor, and I have never changed my golf grip, stance, or swing from what he taught me.  A year after I began playing golf, my sister joined us, and the three of us spent many weekends together playing golf over the years.

Until the mid-1950's, dad dabbled in photography and developed his own photos in our basement.  I even have some amazing color portrait photographs of Sue and me that he took and developed.  Some are as large as 18" x 12".  I think dad got rid of all his photography equipment when he started his own business in 1956, but I still have a dozen of the photos he took.

A photo taken by my dad of mom and me, circa 1951.

Dad loved baseball.  Besides golf and bowling, dad loved baseball.  Since my dad was a life-long New York Yankees fan, I naturally became one also.  I absolutely worshiped the Yankees, and I do to this day.  He taught me to play baseball--throw, catch, hit--and he took me to my first baseball game in Chicago on August 29, 1957, just before I turned eight years old.  Of course, the White Sox played the Yankees, and the Yankees won in 11 innings, 2-1.  I saw nine future Hall-of-Famers on the field that day, including Mickey Mantle, Whitey Ford, Yogi Berra, Larry Doby and Enos Slaughter, who hit the winning home run in the 11th inning.

One of my fondest memories as a kid was playing catch with my dad.  It was pure joy to grab our two baseball gloves and head out to the backyard for a quick game of catch when he'd come home from work.  I'd ask him how the Yankees did that day (since most baseball games in those days were played in the afternoon), and he'd recite the score and who had hit home runs.  Those were great days.

Dad taught me to do lots of other things.  When I was six and my sister was five, he taught us to play chess one Sunday morning.  Sue and I started playing chess together from that day forward.  My mother also was a chess player, so we would have family chess tournaments.  Few of my friends played the game, so it was solely a family endeavor.

Dad taught us various card games, such as casino and gin rummy, but he gave up when trying to teach us bridge.  Neither my sister nor I had a knack for that game, but my dad was an excellent bridge player and would often play in open tournaments in Chicago or Rockford.  He always read the bridge columns in newspapers and occasionally bought magazines that tested his bridge skills, which were superb.  Occasionally I saw Charles Goren bridge books lying around the house; that was perhaps his favorite reading material.

Consistent with his analytical talents, dad taught me to love cryptograms, although he'd often finish all of the difficult cryptograms in puzzle magazines he'd buy for me.  Cryptograms (or "cryptoquips") are unique in that they teach you to recognize patterns in life, a skill that I used in disciplines like songwriting and database design years after I learned to solve those puzzles.

I remember watching College Bowl with dad and Sue during the 1960's.  We loved that show, which was somewhat like Jeopardy! for quartets of college students--one school against another.  What was most surprising is that dad knew the answers to most of the classical music questions.  This was one of those mysteries about him: he was familiar with all of the classical composers, despite never having mentioned the subject to us.  In eighth grade, I tried out for our junior high's Scholastic Bowl team, patterned after College Bowl, and I was selected for the first team.  I was well prepared when we were asked a classical music question.  Years after dad died in 1968, I found many very old records, including the complete symphonies of Beethoven that dad had stashed away and seldom listened to during my life.

Dad was a salesman.  At heart, dad was a salesman, and he was very good at it.  He was handsome and cosmopolitan in his dress and demeanor.  He knew his wares well, and he was honest and direct with his customers.  One amazing trait of my dad's was that he respected the women as much as the men who bought his kitchens.  The women were his main customers, because they spent much of their time in the kitchen.  He asked their opinions and preferences on every detail--are you left-handed or right-handed? Do you prefer gas or electric cook tops?  How do you like to store your pots and pans?  What do you think of this appliance color with your wall color?

Of all the things that made me proud of my dad, his integrity in business ranked at the top.  A deal was sealed with a handshake, and if he ever made a mistake, the resolution was in favor of the customer.  He loved planning new sales strategies, and most of the time he made them work.  He maintained dozens of relationships with people in the industry, and I never heard anyone speak an unkind word about him.

Some Last Thoughts About Dad

Dad died at the age of 60, much too young.  Although I was very close to my dad, I knew very little about his life, and as a teenager I was very shy about asking him to elaborate on the few things I did know.  He never talked about his father, and I suspected that he was estranged from and somewhat scared of him.  A letter between family members described Abraham Cohen as a bit of a "brute," so I concluded that dad had a difficult, perhaps lonely, childhood.  As an adult, dad was a figure of authority, but, since we were fairly good kids, I only remember receiving one light spanking when I was a kid.  If we did something wrong, dad might yell at us for a couple minutes, but I don't ever remember being seriously disciplined for anything.

I don't think I've ever known a person who worked as hard as my dad.  He put in extremely long hours at his company, and, although he often expressed his worries about the business to me, he never complained about having to work or having too much to do.  He liked his whiskey and would drink in seclusion at home when the business was in dire straits or he'd had a serious argument with my mom, but he never drank to excess or gambled or had lady friends on the side.

Dad was an exceptionally good family man, and Sue and I appreciated the constant attention he gave us.  In the last ten years of his life, he was not especially close to my mom.  They had monumental arguments and probably stayed together for "the benefit of the kids."  Mom never enjoyed doing activities outside the home, and dad really enjoyed golf and bowling and driving and baseball games and even taking us out to a park to chase butterflies.

In working with dad at his company during summers and on Saturday mornings for the whole school year, I saw a side of him that no one else saw.  He was not just hard-working, but was efficient and focused on completing such a wide range of tasks.  He just amazed me by his expertise in so many things.

At work my fondest moments, when we were not on a sales call together, was when my dad would bring me an Orange Crush soda while I was slaving away in the 95-degree warehouse heat, replenishing and sorting the kitchen cabinet inventory.  We'd sit on an old bench seat that had been removed from some automobile, both of us sweating profusely, and just talk about things.  We'd talk about baseball or golf or the business, seldom about anything in the past or the future, for that matter.  We were father and son, but also comrades trying to run a successful business.  He always told me how much he appreciated my efforts, and I always told him the same.  We were very proud of each other.

How do I remember my dad?  What things do I associate with him?  He liked Vitalis Hair Tonic, tie pins, wing-tipped shoes, fedora hats, Polo golf shirts, ironed white handkerchiefs, suits, and overcoats; steaks, pickled herring, cornflakes, French pastries, and pies; Mickey Mantle, Yogi Berra, Don Carter, George Halas, Arnold Palmer, and Sam Snead; Henny Youngman, Jack Benny, Milton Berle, Groucho Marx, and Martha Raye; Judy Garland, Peggy Lee, Barbra Streisand, and Ethel Merman; Erle Stanley Gardner and Louis L'Amour; Burke's Law, Peter Gunn, Naked City, and American Bandstand!  He loved to laugh and told the same jokes over and over again.

From a political point of view, he was against the Vietnam War from the very beginning, and he detested any type of bigotry, having experienced anti-Semitism at various times in his life.  He treated all people fairly and with respect, even if he didn't like them very much.  He also loved John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, and Robert Kennedy.  During his life he changed from his moderate Republican stance, having voted for Eisenhower, to being a moderate Democrat.  A couple weeks after the riots in Detroit in 1967, he took me to Detroit to see dozens of city blocks burned to the ground.  He wanted to show me first-hand what the Civil Rights movement was all about.

Martin Luther King, Robert Kennedy, and my dad, Jerry Cowan, all died in 1968.  It took me a long time to get over his death, but most of what I became as an adult was modeled on who my dad was and what he taught me.

A Brief History of Dorothea June Davis

Even less is known about my mother's history and her family.  She was born Dorothea June Davis on June 17, 1912, but most documents show her first name as Dorothy.  She claimed that she was born on a farm near Camden, New Jersey, but there were no records of her birth.  Her father, William Thomas Davis, was a physician--a country doctor.  Mom told us that the family had some milk cows and chickens and that she had to ride a bus to school, so I don't doubt that she lived on a farm as a little girl.  At some point the family moved to Philadelphia, so she often told people she was from that city.

From what few photos I have of mom as a young woman, she must have been very good-looking.  She had auburn hair (dad called her "Red" in some romantic letters) and was of medium height and weight.  She rarely smiled for photos but had a wistful, almost sad look in most of them.

Mom was extremely secretive about her childhood, so I only know scattered facts and memories about her life before I was born.  She said a fire had destroyed all of their belongings and photos, so, except for one very odd occurrence, I never saw a photo of my grandmother or grandfather.  In sixth grade I broke my nose playing basketball, and my mom took me to an ENT specialist in Rockford.  He had received his medical degree from the University of Pennsylvania Medical School, and he had a photo of his graduation class on the wall.  Mom said that one of the men in the photo was her father, and the doctor confirmed the man's name.  The ENT doctor was quite old, so it's possible that I saw a photo of my grandfather that one time.

Mom's Childhood

I suspect that mom had a very unhappy childhood.  She was close to her father, who was very tall, good-looking, and kind.  Her memories of him were few, so perhaps his work as a doctor took him away from the family quite a bit.  She remembered going alone with him on a train ride once, and he bought her an apple while waiting at the station.  That was her fondest memory of him.

Mom never talked about her mother, and it was only shortly before mom's death that she admitted that her mother was very strict and over-bearing and not a very nice person.  Her mother had been married previously and had had two sons, Thomas and Carl, both of whom had been killed in the First World War.  Mom was closest to her younger brother, Richard, who I remember seeing once in a convertible car outside our house briefly when I was very young.  Unfortunately, he was killed in an airplane crash in 1953.  That was one of many tragedies she experienced in her life.

When I could get my mom to talk about her childhood a little bit, she had mostly unhappy memories. She did have a large burn scar on her neck, from when some boiling water had been accidentally spilled on her, and perhaps that contributed to her lonely childhood.  She always took care to wear scarves or high-collared clothes to hide the mark.  Still, there were other tragic events that she carried with her.  One such event was the death of a girlfriend, who evidently jumped off a bridge while she was sleepwalking!

Mom was probably a very lonely child with few possessions and few friends, but she had been educated enough to be an avid reader and have adequate math and social studies skills.  She had very beautiful handwriting, as many people did in those years.  She told me that both parents were Catholic and that she was baptized and raised Catholic, but she had no evidence of that.

I also suspect that mom had some culture and refinement in her life.  While visiting me in California in about 1982, she suddenly sat down at my piano and began playing a piece from memory.  I did not even know that she could play piano, but she was quite good!  She had certainly never played during my lifetime, and I was 33 years old then.  There were many mysteries in my mom's life, and playing piano was one of them.

Mom Leaves Home

I knew that mom had been married previously when she married my dad in 1946, but it was only near the end of her life that I found out she'd been married twice before.  She had married Louis Planzo of Memphis, Tennessee, and, consistent with the many tragedies in her life, he was killed in a boating accident on their honeymoon!  Only very recently before writing this blog, I found a photo of Louis Planzo's gravestone in Memphis.  The related obituary gives my mother's name as his spouse, and the date of his death was June 25, 1933, which was a Sunday.  My mom had just turned 21 years old!

Mom did give me a few glimpses of her life when she left home.  She must have been adventurous then, because she traveled with a girlfriend to different parts of the country after she left home, which was probably soon after high school, if she did, in fact, finish high school.  Mom told me that she loved seeing Mardi Gras in New Orleans and had traveled elsewhere throughout the South.  Somewhere she met Louis, who was two years older, and fell in love with him.  She confided in me that he was the love of her life.

Mom said that she did some modeling in her twenties, but I think she probably met her second husband not long after Louis' death.  She married Howard Van Clapp, and he was a civil engineer who worked on the installation of dams around the country.  She once told me that she had traveled to every continental U.S. state except two, North Dakota and Oregon, and much of that travel was undoubtedly with Howard.  Although he treated her well and they were fairly wealthy, she was bored and lonely.  He did not want children, and she did, so she ended their marriage after eight or nine years.

During that time, more tragedy struck.  Her father died of a heart attack in 1941, and her mother was killed in a car accident only a couple months later, while returning from a visit to his grave at the cemetery.  Mom told me that she traveled home for the funerals and that they are buried together in a small village cemetery near Camden, but I have been unable to locate them.  For some reason, she acquired none of the family belongings and could show me nothing of her parents or her childhood when I asked.  Perhaps her brother had acquired everything after their parents died.

I do have one photo of my mom from her 20's, showing her in a Red Cross uniform.  She said she had worked as a Red Cross ambulance driver during the war, which would have been the Second World War, but I think this photo was taken in the mid-1930's.

Mom Meets Dad

I believe that she and Howard divorced in 1942 or 1943.  By then she was living in South Bend, Indiana, where she met my dad in 1944 or 1945 in a hotel lobby.  I have several photos taken while they were dating.  Dad always loved to take photos, and mom was a beautiful subject.  Below is a photo of mom coming out of her apartment building for a date with my dad.

I didn't discover the next photo until recently.  It shows a side of my mom that I didn't often see--adventurous enough to sit on the fender of an automobile.  I believe that the photo was certainly taken in a year during the Second World War.

[I asked if anyone could identify the year and model of either car, and friend, Janice Marrello, found out the following information from her sources:

"The car your mom is sitting on is a 1941 Buick Special with a Chevy body.  The grill work on the side is disproportionate because the body parts are a bit of a mix and match.  It has a shorter wheel base than previous models.  It also has two gas ration stickers on the windshield--"A" and "C".  The "C" sticker indicates that the driver held one of about fifteen different professions. The car in the background is a 1937 or 1938 Plymouth business coupe."]

Besides doing modeling and driving a Red Cross ambulance, I don't know of any other type of career work my mom did until after my dad died.  Certainly she didn't have to work while married to her second husband, because they were wealthy enough to live on his salary, and my dad was of the firm belief that a woman's place was in the home, doing domestic chores and taking care of the kids.

Mom and dad were married in Auburn, Indiana, on April 15, 1946.  Again, little is known about that period in their lives.  It appears to have been happy years for them, as dad continued to work at Midwest Supply Co. and mom tended house.  A 1947 telephone directory confirms their address in South Bend and the name of dad's company.

Mom, probably in South Bend, circa 1947.

Mom also attempted to have children at that time but had two miscarriages.  She later described me as her "final try" to have a child.  By that time, in 1949, mom and dad had moved back to New York City on an interim basis before trying another Midwest location to start a business and raise a family--Rockford, Illinois.

Mom while she was pregnant with me, dad with their dog, Peter, 1949.

Life On Myott Avenue

The first ten years of my life were spent at 1615 Myott Avenue on the west side of Rockford.  It was an interesting, exciting neighborhood, filled with sounds and activities of my childhood.  In front of our house was where Myott Avenue and Auburn Street merged, and on the island created by Myott, Auburn, and Sherman Street (named after General Sherman from the Civil War) was a fire station.  We would wake up to fire engine sirens at any time, and the firemen would wave to us when returning from a call.

On the other side of Auburn Street in front of our house (to the north) was Rockford's largest cemetery, or I should say cemeteries--Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish cemeteries in a single huge park-like area.  Sue and I liked sitting on the curb in front of our house and watching the long funeral processions entering the cemetery grounds.  It was a scene right out of a Faulkner novel.

The people who lived in the house to the west of ours were the Reeses.  We thought Agnes Reese was a witch, because she looked like the wicked witch from The Wizard Of Oz.  Her husband, Leland, was almost deaf, probably from Mrs. Reese's yelling, and had a severe limp, but he was generally nice to us.  They had an adopted daughter, Donna Lee, who we adored, because she was our babysitter.

To the east of our house and across a vacant lot was a Seventh Day Adventist Church, from which we would be awakened on Saturday mornings by gospel singing.  It was wonderful!  When church let out in the late morning, Sue and I loved sitting on the front porch steps and watching the black women stroll by in their finery.  Those are dear and formative memories from my childhood--hearing gospel music and seeing the black congregation strolling by in clothes far better than anything we had.  We would wave and smile, and everyone would wave and smile back.

Mom and dad had rented the Myott Avenue home because of the wonderful location, albeit having a fire station, cemetery, and church within an easy stone's throw.  Our grade school was one block away on Myott Avenue, and a village of stores (drug store, hardware store, two groceries, cleaners, bookstore, barbershop, candy store, game store, and movie theater) was three blocks away.  The collection of stores was called the North End, and that is where mom would take us when we had shopping to do.  Later, when we had bikes, Sue and I would bike to the North End to visit several of the stores on Saturday mornings.  Vanilla phosphates at the drug store's soda counter were our very favorite drink.

While dad drove to his office and worked hard all day, mom took care of the kids and the house.  She kept us fed, bathed, clothed, and entertained.  She did all of the clothes washing and shopping, took us to all of our doctor and dentist appointments, and did all of the cooking.  And she did all of that without having the use of a car; she did not have an Illinois driver's license until we were in junior high school!

Although mom had had a much higher "standard of living" when she was married to her second husband, with much fancier clothes and jewelry and one or two servants, she was happiest with her kids on Myott Avenue.  One peculiar part of her life on Myott is that she seemed to not have any friends, but only acquaintances from the neighborhood.  Because of where the house was situated, she was isolated from having any next-door neighbor she could drop in to see.

My mom did convert to the Jewish religion in the mid-1950's, and she belonged to the women's group at the temple, but she did not develop any lasting friendships there.  Her life in the 1950's on Myott Avenue was devoted to her husband and her two kids.

We Move To Jackson Street

When I reached fifth grade, mom and dad realized that we needed a bigger house, because Sue and I were sharing the same bedroom in the Myott Avenue bungalow.  We moved during the summer of 1960 to a small, three-bedroom home on Jackson Street on the east side of Rockford.  Sue and I felt that we had all of the space we needed, because we no longer shared the same bedroom and closet.  Still, it was a small house, with one bathroom and a small kitchen.

Life was more difficult for mom when we moved to Jackson Street, because we were six blocks from the nearest store, dad was working very long hours at his business, and her kids were beginning to grow up.  By the beginning of 1962, she had finally gotten her Illinois driver's license, and we'd purchased an old used car for her to drive.  It was a gray and pink Oldsmobile that probably didn't even have power steering.

It was in the spring of 1962 that dad's colon cancer struck, so everything was left for mom to do during the months of his recovery following surgery.  She took care of him, Sue, me, and our stray dog, Buddy.  During dad's recovery, Buddy died one morning in our backyard, while Sue and I were at school.  It was a tough time for our family, but mom held it together.  Still, she had not made any friends in her new neighborhood, and she was probably very lonely.

For several years in the 1960's, she taught Sunday School at the new Jewish temple that had opened on the east side of Rockford.  She loved that endeavor, because she got to be with very young kids again.  She taught first grade.  She'd drive us to Sunday School and teach while we attended our classes.  The kids loved her, and so did the parents.

During our high school years in the mid-1960's, mom always drove us to school events and invited our friends into our home, while keeping the house in order and helping out often at dad's office.  I had half a dozen good friends in high school, and they all considered mom as their second mother.  She encouraged them to drop by whenever they wanted to talk, and they took her up on that offer all the time.  She took the time to get to know every kid, and they often came to our house in the evening to see her and not me!  When I learned to drive and borrowed her car, I'd come home from seeing a friend and find another friend sitting in our den, talking with mom.

Life Without Her Husband

After dad died in December, 1968, mom immediately moved to another house on nearby Summit Street and began to reorganize her life.  She had sold the few assets from the business, but she needed to find a job for the first time in over 25 years.  She took some courses to become a licensed practical nurse, passed her tests, and found a position at the Rockford Municipal Tuberculosis Sanitorium.  I remember how impressed I was that mom could actually accomplish so much soon after dad died.

During the process of finding work, an event occurred that somehow solidified the mystery of my mom's age.  Evidently, our family doctor advised her to lie about her age while applying for any job, because employers were much more likely to hire a woman of age 48 rather than one of age 56.  She always looked very young for her age, so she adopted that strategy.  Of course, she'd lied about her age (and dad's age) to us kids for many years anyway, but if the doctor said it was okay, she decided to continue the practice.  It wasn't until she turned 90 years old, in 2002, that she admitted her true age to me, when I complimented her for looking so good at 82!

When the sanitorium (and it was a sanitorium, not a sanitarium) closed down in the early 1970's, she found a nursing job at Rockford Swedish American Hospital, where my sister Sue had been born in 1950.  She also moved to her last Rockford residence on East State Street, which was only five blocks from the hospital.  The job she found at Swedish American was in the nursery of the hospital, which was ideal for mom, because she loved caring for babies.  She worked for about 12 years at Swedish American, when she retired, not at the age of 65, but at the age of 73.  Below is a photo of mom wearing a corsage, on the day of her well-attended retirement party.

Mom's Years In California

I tried to get mom to move to California for 13 years after dad died, before she finally moved in 1989.  She had endured the hard, snowy winters and the hot summers of Rockford, and all her old friends from the hospital had died.  When her rent on East State Street was raised by $15 a month, that was the last straw for her, so she decided to move.

Mom first stayed with my brother, Mike, when she moved to California, but we soon found her an excellent, low-rent apartment in Mountain View.  A couple months after she moved in, we had the big 1989 earthquake, and she immediately wanted to move back to Illinois, but I talked her out of it.  She was happy where she was living and was even making a few new friends.  Initially she would take the bus a few blocks to do her grocery shopping, but it wasn't long before I did all of her shopping, took her to medical appointments, and took her out to dinner a couple times a month.

That's how mom lived for most of her final 15 years.  She was very content to stay in her apartment, which had a nice view of a sunny courtyard, raise her cactus plants, read, watch television, crochet, and fix me lunch once or twice a week.  She never traveled back to Illinois but still corresponded with a few friends.  She loved coming to our home, seeing our dog, Casey, drinking a small glass of wine, and just visiting with people.  California did become her home, and she often scoffed at the notion of moving back to the Midwest.

Mom in her late eighties, circa 2000.

Her health began to fail in early 2004, and we got a care worker to help her a few hours a day.  By June she agreed to move into a care facility and was actually excited about the prospect.  One day after she moved into the facility, she fell in the middle of the night while walking to the bathroom, and within two days she developed sepsis from the small cut on her arm.  Her body was ready to fully shut down, and she died peacefully in the hospital on July 5, 2004, soon after her 92nd birthday.

The last moments of her life were spent as I recited the day's baseball scores to her.  Suzanne and I were both at her bedside.  Our favorite team, the New York Yankees, had beaten Detroit that day, 10-3.  When I told her the score, she smiled, nodded her head, and passed away.

Memories Of Mom

Mom taught us to read in an unusual fashion. When I was four years old and Sue was three, mom would often make our peanut butter sandwiches, pack a picnic, and lead us to a wonderful setting deep inside the cemetery across from our house.  We sat on an old bench under a large shade tree and next to a small goldfish pond.  We'd eat our sandwiches, drink our milk, and watch the fish swim next to us.  We were not disturbed by anyone.

When lunch was finished, Sue and I would wander around the nearby graves, and we asked what the headstones said.  That's how we learned to read our first words--from headstones on graves.  I knew the words "born", "died", "husband", "wife", "son", and "daughter" before I knew common words such as "the", "and", and "or".

I also knew the concepts of birth and death from our days wandering through the cemetery.  Mom let us play around the graves without disturbing them, so we grew up enjoying the peace and quiet of cemeteries.

Mom let me be a little kid, but she was protective.  Except for not encouraging me to swim or be around water, mom let me be a little kid.  I got dirty, had skinned knees, rode my bike around the block for miles and miles, collected baseball cards, and made friends easily.  Often she was quite hesitant about letting me try something new, because she wanted to protect me and Sue from dangers in the world, but in the end she usually relented and let me be a kid.

One stark memory of my childhood was that she let me have a doll.  (My sister had little interest in dolls.)  For some unknown reason, I named the doll Paint.  I thought it was a good name.  Paint was a non-gender doll that wore a light blue smock and was about two feet tall, and I carried Paint around with me for about a year.  I remember watching Captain Kangaroo and Winky Dink (look it up!!) on our black-and-white television with Paint by my side.  Sometimes I'd put on one of dad's old hats, put some keys in my pocket, and go sit behind the living room chair, pretending to "drive downtown to work," just like dad did.  Paint was my passenger and companion, and I'd hold long conversations with Paint.

I got the impression that dad was concerned about me playing with a doll, but mom said it was fine.  She knew the doll-playing stage would pass, and so it did when I was given my first baseball.

Mom kept us entertained.  Mom was a very attentive and creative mother.  What we lacked in money, we gained in "make do with what you have," because mom always kept us entertained.  Her specialty was creating new games for us, if we were tired of playing the two or three board games we owned.  Mom loved giving us spelling tests, even before I began kindergarten, and Sue and I loved competing against each other.  During the early summers, mom would give us ten new words each week to learn.  My nemesis was the word "tomorrow," which I always wanted to spell "tommorow."

I remember one simple, little game from which we experienced great joy.  Sue and I sat on the living room floor about eight feet from each other, and we'd roll a rubber ball back and forth.  For each roll, we'd have to make the sound of an animal or vehicle, and the other kid would have to guess what it was--a horse, a sheep, an airplane, a train.  At every turn she taught us creativity and curiosity and involvement.  Certainly it helped to grow up with a sibling who was so close in age--and a very competitive sibling at that--but mom was up to the task of always keeping us busy.

Mom took care of us when we were sick.  Perhaps because she had training as a nurse, mom was especially adept at taking care of my sister and me when we were sick.  If we ever needed her during the night, we each had a little bell (made in India!) that we could ring.  By the unique sound of each bell, she knew which one of us was calling, and she'd be there in a flash.

I was sick a lot when I was a kid.  Measles, chicken pox, flu, colds, pneumonia (three times), I often missed a week or two of school with an illness.  I seemed to catch everything (except the mumps, which my sister suffered through).  The worst sickness came in the winter of 1957-58, when I caught the last pandemic to hit the United States--the Asian flu.  That illness killed over 70,000 Americans, and I was the only one in my family to catch it.

I missed three weeks of school from the Asian flu, and she was by my bedside most of the time.  What little I remember of those three weeks (fever, delirium, not being able to keep any food down), my mom was always there with cold compresses, sips of broth, changes of clothes.  I was finally hospitalized due to dehydration, but most of the sickness was over.  I couldn't wait to get home, where the care was better.

Mom started the Walker Wildcats.  The day I finished fourth grade and Sue finished third grade, mom invited us and a couple of our friends to meet in our living room, where she presented an idea for our summer activity.  She wanted to form a neighborhood softball team for us and our friends.  We were all tremendously eager to play softball two nights a week, and mom made it happen.

We were the Walker Wildcats, and we played on the Walker Elementary School's playground, where there was already a baseball diamond.  We invited all of our friends to play, and there were about 16 of us, including a few girls.  She made Walker Wildcats tee shirts for every player, and she served as the umpire and scorekeeper, including tracking every homerun.  Each night we'd choose up sides and then play about five innings together.

At first several of our friends thought it was a silly idea, but, one by one, they joined us on every Monday and Thursday night.  Since we were all avid baseball fans and players, the quality of play was quite good.  Soon many adults and little kids from the neighborhood would come watch us play, and we were bitterly disappointed if it ever rained.  Another tradition began halfway through the summer, when some parent would walk all of us down to the neighborhood ice cream parlor for cones after the game.

At the end of the summer, my parents held a hamburger and hotdog cookout for all the players, and she surprised us all by handing out an award to each kid.  We were all very sorry to see that summer end, but I was very proud of my mom.  For three months we literally lived for those softball nights.

Mom could really bake!  Mom was not much of a cook, as far as variety and fancy meals were concerned, but she was the best baker I ever knew.  As far as dinners went, I didn't know what raw vegetables looked like until I was in college; I thought everything came in a can.  But it was many years before I tasted pies and cakes as good as what mom made.  My favorite pie was banana cream, although she would make apple, cherry, peach, and rhubarb pies for us.  Her chocolate chip cookies and fudge could have won baking contests, and she always baked a birthday cake on each of our birthdays.

Mom told the hilarious story of when she first tried her hand at baking, early in her second marriage.  It was a scene right out of "I Love Lucy."  Her husband had invited his boss and boss's wife to dinner, and mom attempted to bake an apple pie.  When she served the pie to each person, the boss attempted to cut the crust with the edge of his fork.  He tried and tried and tried, until finally he succeeded, only to have the piece fly over his shoulder and hit the curtain hanging behind him.  Mom stood up without a word, collected all the pie servings, and brought out another simple dessert.

After that, she set her mind on becoming a good baker, and she became very, very good.  I have a vivid memory of sitting in sixth grade class and being able to smell my mom's chocolate chip cookies cooling on her kitchen windowsill, down the hill and a block away.  I couldn't wait for the hour to be over so I could rush home and have some.

Mom was everyone's mom.  I don't know how many times I came home as a teenager or as an adult and found one of my friends sitting with mom and talking.  She just had a great way of befriending my friends, until they preferred talking with her rather than their own parents.  For the most part, she didn't judge them; she just showed she was interested in what they were doing and how they were feeling.  And, she kept their secrets, which was very special.

In my essay, "A Magical Mystery Tour," I remark that the strange trip ended when we arrived at my mom's place in Rockford, after driving 6,000 miles.  Two of the three of us went directly to bed, but the third person stayed up and talked with mom for over two hours, never having met her.  My friend, Kuddie, was a very private person, but somehow mom immediately befriended him and encouraged him to confide in her.  It was one of many such encounters when the friend finished the conversation by calling her "mom."

Mom was punctual, caring, and funny.  Mom was never late for anything in her life, and she made sure I inherited that trait.  If I was three minutes late picking her up for an appointment, I heard about it.  I grew to really appreciate that quality in her personality, because I could depend on her to not keep me waiting.

Part of mom's extreme caring for people is that she remembered everything.  She was sharp as a tack until her dying day, and people appreciated how she would remember details about their lives, even if she hadn't seen them for a long time.  She also adopted my wife as her own daughter and my two step-kids as her own grandchildren.  And she loved my dog, Casey, even though he weighed more than she did.

Perhaps the most endearing thing about mom was that she was funny and could appreciate humorous stories.  She had a quick wit and would come out with one-liners that always made me laugh.  Once when she'd flown from Illinois to visit me in California, we finally got to my home from the airport and she headed directly to the bathroom, saying, "The last time I went was over Kansas."  That really cracked me up.

Some Last Thoughts About Mom

Mom was a sophisticated lady by the time she met my dad.  She was beautiful, well-dressed, and carried herself like she was a big-city girl, although she was raised in the country, probably on a small farm.  For a woman who was not educated and may not have finished high school, she was more capable than most people.

How do I remember my mom?  What things do I associate with her?  She liked dresses, Chanel No. 5 perfume, and lipstick; Hummel figurines, knitting, crocheting, and paint-by-number kits; the New York Yankees, Chicago Bears, and Chicago Bulls; cream of tomato soup, grilled cheese sandwiches, and brownies; cream sherry and Viceroy cigarettes; Bonanza, To Tell The Truth, The Guiding Light, and The Edge of Night; Woman's Day magazine and Reader's Digest; Frankie Laine, Johnnie Ray, Guy Lombardo, and Gordon Lightfoot; and watching sports shows on TV.  Her all-time favorite athletes were Walter Payton and Michael Jordan.

Mom had a bit of "southern belle" in her, and throughout her life I challenged her to accept all races, religions, and nationalities equally.  She probably changed in that respect more than in any other way during her lifetime, partly from seeing how my dad accepted and treated all people and partly because she did not want to be criticized by her son.  I would not stand for any shadow of bias when she talked about groups of people.

My mom was a really good mother as long as she knew how to be, which ended when my dad died and I turned 20.  I think my dad would have guided me through my twenties, answering "adult" questions and giving grown-up advice.  For the most part, mom and I switched places when I reached the age of 20.  I advised her on finances, purchases, relationships (including her relationship with my sister), meeting new friends, career choices, and activities.  I had gone far beyond her in my schooling, and she was ultra-secretive about the romantic relationships she had had in her life.  Her advice was just a replay of advice I'd received as a teenager.

Still, that was fine with me.  When she moved to California in 1989, I was more than happy to be the adult--make choices for her, take her places, and shop for her.  She depended on me as much in her last 15 years as I had depended on her my first 17 years.  When I was very young, I had nightmares about my mom dying, and I would wake up crying.  She always comforted me and told me that she wasn't going to die for a very long time.  She was right.

Mom and Dad Together

I have surprisingly few photos of my mom and dad together, mostly because my dad usually took the pictures himself.  One photo I ran across in my Aunt Bernice's keepsakes is the photo below.

Mom and dad, far right, at a New Year's dinner, 1948.

My mom and dad are at the far right, and my aunt is across from my mom.  I believe the man across from my dad is an uncle on his mother's side of the family, but I'm not sure.  One curious thing about the photo is that all five men at the table are wearing the same style of tie!  Although it is not easy to see, another curiosity is that my mom and dad are holding hands, unbeknownst to the others!

Part of the great mystery surrounding my mom and dad was how they ever managed to stay married, because they argued a great deal as Sue and I got older.  Although dad worked very long hours to provide for his family, mom implicitly criticized him by yearning for things we couldn't afford, like a larger home.  On the other hand, dad would criticize mom for not having his dinner ready or shirts ironed.  In fact, they were both under immense pressure in maintaining a family that was always fed, clothed, and sheltered.  Dad was the decision-maker, and mom often didn't like that.

There was not much romance between them--an occasional bouquet of flowers or unexpected gift, but little affection.  Mostly, they didn't readily acknowledge how hard the other one was working, just to maintain a family.  There was never a night out together, as both of them had been used to when they were courting and younger.  Their interests diverged so much that their only real commonality was how much they loved their kids.

Still, no one could ever say a mean word about either one of them without the other one rising to his or her defense.  They were fiercely loyal and faithful to each other, even when they often disagreed.  They were married for twenty-two years and provided the foundation for my childhood and teenage years. I think of both of them all the time, almost entirely in recollecting good memories, even though there is so much I'll never know.

         

                        Two of the rare photos I have of dad and mom together, the first from 1949 and the second from 1952.