ABOUT SIXTY-SIX CHICAGO LITERARY CLUB PAPERS
by
FRANCIS H. STRAUS II
Delivered to The Chicago Literary Club
January 25, 1999
On March 17th, 1874, the new Chicago Literary Club accepted
the preamble to its
flowery proposed but never accepted constitution. The preamble
declared the Club was "to
promote the true sovereignty of letters and culture; to sustain
the same by the moral and social
virtues; to form and maintain a literary organization fairly
representative of the intellectual rank
and progress of Chicago and to cultivate fraternal relations with
other exponents of literature and
art".
In order to see whether the vision of our founders has been
honored and maintained I have
chosen for a subject tonight the discussion of 66 Chicago
Literary Club papers from 1897 to
1998. This is a little over one percent of the papers presented
to the Club. The sixty-six papers I
have chosen were not randomly selected. They are all papers
written and presented by members
of my immediate family. They start with my great uncle George
Packard, a Literary Club member
from 1894 to 1949 and the writer of thirty presentations.
Followed next by my maternal
grandfather Albert Martin Kales, a member from 1902 to 1907 who
gave three papers. Then
comes my father-in-law Ernst Wilfred Puttkammer, a member from
1923 to 1978, the author of
eighteen presentations. Next is my father Francis H. Straus I, a
member from 1976 to 1988 and
the writer of one paper presented to this Club. Last I include
myself, a member since 1966 and
the author of fourteen papers.
Something about these men and their offerings to this Club
should give a sense for subject
matter chosen and methods of presentation. Needless to say these
are five different persons with
different training, different abilities, and different interests.
Yet taken together they may give an
idea of how this literary club has evolved and what kinds of
subjects have been covered in the last
hundred years. Unfortunately the working professions of this
family group of five are very limited
with three lawyers and two physicians, yet that distribution has
some similarity to the overall
modern Club membership if you discount the businessmen,
educators, ministers, and artists.
My great uncle, George Packard, was born in 1868 in
Providence, Rhode Island. He was
educated in the English and Classical School in Providence and
then in Brown University,
graduating in 1889 with Phi Beta Kappa honors. He had considered
an acting career but was
urged to follow a steadier path by going to Chicago and joining
his maternal uncle Mr. Peckham's
law firm working as clerk and attending an apprentice type law
school, the Union College of Law,
with morning and evening classes. This law school soon after
combined with Northwestern Law
School. He graduated with an LLB in 1891 and won the oration
prize. He then joined the same
Peckham and Brown firm. Peckham was the lawyer for the First
National Bank and Brown was a
senior respected lawyer who did some bank work, but had a broader
practice, wanted to be a
judge and was a enthusiastic member of the Chicago Literary Club.
Mr. Packard took a brief
leave from the firm to be assistant attorney for the World's
Colombian Exposition setting up
concession contracts. He married my grandmother's younger sister
Caroline Howe in 1893 and
returned to Peckham and Brown. He spent his entire career at
this firm and became the most
senior partner in 1924 after Judge Brown died.
Mr. Packard's most important case was one concerning
riparian rights along the North
Chicago shore between Diversey and Belmont Avenues. Here
commercial interests owned the
shoreline and envisaged building piers out into the Lake to trap
sand, thus making more land
which they could sell for a huge profit. According to riparian
rights they owned the land up to the
water's edge but who controlled new land that would be formed
where water had previously
stood? Governor Altgeld had appointed Mr. Brown the lawyer for
Lincoln Park and he then put
Packard to the task of studying the law. After careful research
Packard was convinced that the
Lake could only be used for public good so if land replaced water
the business interests would
have to get state approval to sell that land for personal profit.
Such approval would be very
unlikely. The legal case, People Vs.. Revell, went to the
Illinois Supreme Court and The People
won. The shoreline under discussion then became part of Lincoln
Park. Similar legal precedent
was important in the development of Streeterville and Grant Park.
After this case was closed in
1899, Mr. Packard argued two U.S. Supreme Court cases, one a
bankruptcy case which he won
with help from Chief Justice Holmes who gave him hints on how to
argue his case and from
Justice Day, a fellow Mackinac Island summer cottage owner. The
second was a case concerning
sealing both safe deposit boxes when one member of a couple dies.
Mr. Packard was defending
the right of the living member to maintain an unsealed deposit
box. He lost this case in a more
conservative Supreme Court.
Mr. Packard thought of himself as an old fashioned lawyer,
always practicing out of the
same firm, always living on the North Side on Barry Avenue,
helping to care for his mother-in-law
who had been very active in the W. C. T. U. and women's suffrage
issues in her active years.
During the Chicago Fire she had welcomed many of the destitute
into her home, but only after
chopping a hole in a whiskey barrel left in the basement by her
then deceased husband. Mr.
Packard always spent as much time as possible in the summer north
on Mackinac Island in a cozy
wooden cottage which he built on the British Landing side of the
Island. I believe he was
introduced to Mackinac Island by Judge Brown who also enjoyed a
summer home on the Island.
There is a family story that Caroline Packard's father, Francis
Howe, brought his bride to
Mackinac Island on their wedding trip, staying at the Mission
House hotel but we have not yet
figured out how to find and see the old hotel registers. If
true, this also might have influenced the
Packards in coming to Mackinac.
Later in his career Mr. Packard gave more and more cases to
the younger members of the
firm, and enjoyed his life-long interest in the theater and in
writing. He presented papers at the
Chicago Literary Club until four years before his death in
1949.
George Packard's papers were mostly biography (seven) and
about law (seven). The
biographical subjects were historical: Roger Williams, Tecumseh,
Nicolet, Hennepin, David
Gerrick and Thomas Peacock. His law papers were often historical
like "Justice in the Michigan
Territory", autobiographical like "50 Years in the Bar" (1941),
and essays such as "A Comparison
of English and American Common Law," "Citizenship," "Are Lawyers
Leaders or Followers,"
and "A Lawyer Looks at Life" (1935). Six papers (in the 1920's)
were about drama, discussions
of current plays he had seen, about actors, and the playwrights
Eugene O'Neill, and Ibsen. Then
there were four papers of literary criticism, about Dickens'
lawyers (1911) , Midwest novels, a
Canadian Kipling (1912), and the novelist William Howell's
humanism. The rest of his papers
were single subjects; one a historical fictional accounting of
Pontiac's rebellion and the difficulties
of Alexander Henry in the Mackinac Straits area, a program of his
own poems (1917), a strong
paper belittling Negro discrimination (1914) and a travel paper
on the Sahara (1929).
These contributions to the Club do not include his book
reviews which were given in
coordination with other members to fill out a given evening
program. What an output! His many
presentations to the Club certainly put him in the top ten
members who have contributed the most
papers here. He was a member for 55 years.
Several overall observations include asking why Mr. Packard
wrote so many papers
concerning his primary profession, the law. It was suggested to
me on joining this Club that one's
primary profession was not a subject which should be written
about for fear that the author would
get caught up in the specialized jargon of his profession and the
politics that certainly color all of
our daily professional routines. Actually Mr. Packard mostly
stayed with larger issues and only
got into petty politics when he described judges with whom he had
had dealings. The other major
surprise was the length of many of his papers. Six of his
longest were 30 to 44 pages. I do not
see how he could present these papers in 60 minutes. Either he
was a very fast reader or he
presented shortened versions to the Club. Does anyone here know
when the sixty minute rule
was first suggested or used, as we try to do today?
The next near relative was my mother's father, Mr. Albert M.
Kales. He was born in
Chicago in March 1875, one of the middle children in a moderately
large family. His mother,
Ellen Davis Kales, was a sister of Nathan Davis, one the founders
of the AMA and a professor in
George Packard's apprentice law school. His son Nathan Davis Jr.
was briefly a member of our
Club, 1888 to 1899. Both of Albert's parents died in one of the
Chicago epidemics of the time
leaving Albert an orphan in his childhood. The children were
taken in by the Nathan Davis family
and treated as much less than equal children. As soon as they
were old enough to leave this
household, they did. The eldest child oversaw Albert's going off
to Saint Paul's School in
Connecticut, then to Harvard College graduating in 1896, and
Harvard Law School, graduating
with an LLB in 1899. Albert then oversaw the education of his
youngest brother Francis, who
went through college and architectural school under Albert's
guidance.
After law school Mr. Kales returned to Chicago, passed the
Illinois Bar examination and
married Anna Bradley all in the same year. He joined the Chicago
law firm which for many years
was known as Fisher, Boyden, Kales and Bell. He always lived in
the northern suburbs and
commuted to work on the train. He and his wife had two daughters
and a son, gave wonderful
dinner parties discussing the problems of the world, and he loved
walking trips. By 1902 he was
teaching property law at Northwestern Law School and became a
professor there in 1910. He
taught one year at Harvard Law School (1916-17) but turned down
their recruitment because
they would not allow him to carry six private cases a year, a
minimum in his opinion necessary to
keep him sharp and up-to-date in his teaching. So he remained at
Northwestern.
Mr. Kales authored eight law books throughout his career.
The most well recognized
were Future Interests in Illinois, 1905, Unpopular Government in
the United States, 1914, and
Estates and Future Interests, 1920.
He was a member of the Chicago Literary Club from January
1902 to November 1907 and
presented three papers to the Club. The first, entitled "Lady
Rose's Daughter" is not preserved in
the Newberry Library archive. It was read April 23, 1903, and I
once read a portion of it. The
paper was a complimentary literary criticism of a recently
published contemporary English novel.
As I remember it was quite ordinary. Next was his "Lines on a
Sunset behind Monadnock" given
in November 1904. This paper is also not available and I do wish
I could read it because it may
be descriptive of the author's interest in walking trips. His
mother-in-law was born and grew up
near Mt. Monadnock. Finally he wrote "The Will of an English
Gentleman of Moderate Fortune"
read on March 19, 1906. This paper was available to me and is a
lawyer's essay on inheritance
law: how it came about and how certain interests can be
protected by the various clauses of a
will. He starts with the statement that in joining the Chicago
Literary Club he had two
resolutions: one to read a paper whenever asked and second not to
inflict his interpretation of law
on the Club. Then he says he hopes this paper will "enlarge the
horizons of the layman with
knowledge of his own affairs". Basically he was
over-optimistically wishing because this is a
straight legal essay about inheritance law. It does not discuss
any of his own cases or any aspects
of culture or human interest. My grandfather resigned from the
Club the next year. Fifteen
years later he went on a solitary walking trip in the Appalachian
mountains ending up in Baltimore
where he ate fresh oysters. On returning to Chicago he became
seriously ill with typhoid fever,
dying six weeks later in July 1922 when he was 47 years old. I
could give a graphic description of
his terminal illness in keeping with the Victorian obituaries
read to us earlier this year by Clark
Wagner, but I will spare you.
The next close relative on my list is Ernst Wilfred
Puttkammer, my father-in-law. He was
a member of the Chicago Literary Club for fifty five years,
extending from March 1923 to March
1978, and he presented eighteen papers to the Club. He was born
in Chicago in 1891, the only
child of a German immigrant father and a second generation German
immigrant mother. His father
was a successful coal merchant and he grew up on the city's South
side spending summers on
Mackinac Island, Michigan, and traveling to Europe with his
parents. He had a private tutor for
his childhood only going to formal school to finish high school.
He chose Princeton for his
college, graduating in 1914 with Phi Beta Kappa honors, and then
attended the University of
Chicago Law School earning the Order of the Coif. He finished
in time to enter the U.S. Army
and served in France with A. E. F. Somehow he survived the War
and after occupation duty he
returned to Chicago and clerkship in the downtown law firm of
Fisher, Boyden, Kales and Bell. I
never knew my grandfather as he died long before I was dreamed
of, but I could hear about him
not only from my mother, but later from my father-in-law.
Then the University of Chicago Law School found itself
deficient of an instructor of
criminal law so they asked their brilliant recent graduate to
fill in temporarily. This temporary
appointment turned into a long and full career starting in 1920
and extending until he retired in
1957. He was active as senior advisor to the Chicago Law Review
and as editor of the Illinois
Law Review, a member of the Citizens Police Commission, and the
Chicago Crime Commission.
He lived and traveled some with his parents until 193l when he
married Helen Louise Monroe,
from South Haven, Michigan, and Chicago, and started a family of
two children. He broadened
his professional interests by becoming a member of the Academy of
Criminology and the Chicago
Council on Foreign Relations. He made presentations to the
Illinois Parole Board and wrote a
Manual of Criminal Law and Criminal Procedure for Police
published in 1931 and revised in
1946. He lectured in the Chicago Police Academy and almost every
active Chicago policeman
knew him and greeted him as he traversed the city. He later
wrote the book, Administration of
Criminal Law in 1953 for use in teaching law students. He enjoyed
his professorial work, and very
much appreciated travel, stamp collecting, and history as serious
avocations.
All of his eighteen Literary Club contributions were
primarily history, some history of
European businesses or history of travel. Two were very
autobiographical, his First World War
experiences. Two others were postage oriented. Most of these
papers are very good and some
excellent. In this group of 66 papers his are by far the most
superior and this was recognized by
the Club as three were published, two given the honor of
presentation on what used to be called
"Ladies Night" and two were asked to be reread by the author.
And one was reread by me as a
classics night presentation.
His first (1924) and seventh (1936) papers dealt with
postage, the first on the history of
stamp usage and the seventh on the history of the first mail
carrier company, "The Princes of
Thurn and Taxis", which was published by the Club. The author
was a long time stamp collector
specializing in German empire stamps. After the second World War
when two major German
collections were presumed destroyed, Mr. Puttkammer's collection
was probably the most
complete German Empire stamp collection in the world. He gave
the entire collection to the
Smithsonian Museum where it now resides in the postage branch of
the Museum in the Old D. C.
Post Office building.
Then following the history of the first message carrier
family came two more histories of
European companies. The first was about the Fugger family, "A
Famous Family of Old
Augsburg" (1943). The Fuggers had started out as leather
workers, then expanded into merchant
banking, mining, making and backing Holy Roman Emperors, and
finally losing out to the power
of Philip the Second of Spain who prevented any assets in Spain
from being moved back to
Germany. The second was about the British East India Company
(1945) which Mr. Puttkammer
said was the most influential company ever because more
individuals were affected by its
decisions than any other company. This occurred because the
company was both "the
government" and "the legal system" in India as well as being the
merchants for all imports and
exports into and out of that country. Once it had gotten so big,
rich and powerful, the English
Parliament took over the company. Reading in detail about these
three successful European
businesses is very enlightening.
My favorite of Mr. Puttkammer's papers is his fifteenth, in
1955, a presentation that began
with the known facts concerning the Pied Piper of Hamelin story,
followed by how the story was
fictionally enlarged and then concluded with how in the 1930's a
proposal that a migration of
young people from Germany to Bohemia in 1286 fit all the original
known facts of the fable. No
rats or flute were really part of it. This paper should also
have been published after it was read as
a "Ladies Night" paper. Somehow this paper puts you back into
small town life in medieval
Germany with their cryptic writings on the houses, dependence on
the baker and other town
services and why the town record keepers were not anxious to
admit that a large number of
young people preferred to try their luck in Bohemia instead of
staying in Hamelin.
Five of Mr. Puttkammer's papers dealt with travel subjects,
two on purely historical
aspects. The first was his second paper (1927), citing many
brief descriptions of sights travelers
said they had seen in their travels; most of these descriptions
are only partially correct or are
downright falsehoods. There are many separate descriptions which
do not hang together well.
His second travel paper (1933) was a biographical accounting of
the widely traveled Muslim Ibn
Battuta who was born and grew up in Morocco, but soon had
crisscrossed Egypt, the Near East
and East Africa, later the Mideast, then India, the East Indies,
getting to China and then back by
way of Ceylon, Arabia, Algeria, Spain and finally home to Morocco
having covered 75,000 miles
in twenty nine years. The Moroccan sheik supported Ibn Battuta's
making a record of all of his
experiences. He at various times was a multimillionaire and at
other times had lost everything. He
was able to move about impressing political leaders with his good
hearted cheerfulness and
knowledge of the Islamic religion and thus getting gifts to
support his existence and further
travels. All this took place thirty years after Marco Polo
returned and represents an amazing
dedication to travel and a miracle that he survived it all.
Three other papers dealt with personal travel subjects. The
first (1928) was a description
of traveling with his parents across North Africa and through the
Atlas Mountains to the northern
edge of the Sahara dessert, in the 1920's. This was an
illustrated paper using the author's own
photographs and was his third paper. The other two were later
papers, his sixteenth (spring 1957)
and seventeenth (fall 1957). One describes the history of the
Mau Mau movement in Kenya and
compares it at the peak of its powers with its status in 1956 at
the time the author visited Kenya.
This is a sad history of tribal conflicts and the power of the
black majority against the white
colonial minority. This paper was published by the Club. The
seventeenth paper was impressions
of a trip to Russia during the prolonged Cold War period. Here
he describes the problems of
getting a visa, the necessity of traveling with an Intourist
"guide", what they were allowed to see,
hotel accommodations, food, what money was worth, people and Cold
War propaganda. He
describes a world botanical map in a young peoples' meeting place
which showed in Russia and
China forests in the north, then wheat fields, then grapes and
cotton and ending in the south with
roses and oranges. For North America the map only showed moss in
the north and cacti in the
south.
Two very special papers in this author's contribution to the
Club were his "Letters from
the A. E. F." and "More Letters from the A. E. F.", read in the
spring and fall of 1932. These
papers were derived from an only child's letters home while he
was fulfilling his duty as a private
in the American army during the First World War. He cut out all
the family references, added
names and places not used originally because of censorship, and
kept all the descriptions of life in
the armed service, mostly how long one had to stand around
waiting for the orders to get down to
his level before starting to accomplish anything. He was trained
in Camp Meade, Maryland, in the
311th machine gun company of the 79th Division. Embarkation was
supposed to be a total secret
but crowds cheered all the way along the rail route to Jersey
City where they boarded the
"Leviathan", the former German transatlantic liner "Vaterland".
He describes the primitive
bathrooms and showers on the ship. Being lodged eight decks down
with all water tight doors
between sections permanently shut, they had real worries about
torpedoes. The troops were
allowed on deck 2 hours out of each 24. All their equipment and
belongings had to fit on their
bunks along with themselves as they slept. In France he had to
practice putting machine guns
together blindfolded and having shooting practice. He became the
company's French interpreter
to help trade soap and candles for potatoes. He also bargained
for laundry service from local farm
women for himself and other soldiers.
Then he was pulled out of the machine gun company and
transferred to headquarters to
learn to be a forward scout. The reason was never stated but his
ability to speak German as a
native may have been a factor. After brief training he was sent
up to the front and with two
others was assigned to an observation platform high in a beach
tree, relieving a six member
French observation team. The site looked out over the battle
trenches near Verdun. The
Americans took turns observing through a telescope on a tripod,
slept in a little tin house at the
foot of the tree and cooked meals when food came from a mile
away. If they saw any movement
in the German trenches they called headquarters. One thing they
could see was a very large, and
surprisingly undamaged, house in a small town on a hill just over
on the German side. This they
learned later was the reinforced concrete structure from which
the German Crown Prince had
observed the battle scene earlier in the War. Later the American
forces built up enough
manpower to push the Germans back and the tree observation post
had to be abandoned, and
another post established further forward. Crossing no man's
land, Mr. Puttkammer ended up in
the German fortified building and used it temporarily as an
American observation post. He was
the first American in this building after the Germans retreated.
Before leaving the Germans had
disarmed a very powerful periscope, much more powerful that the
American telescope, with
which they had been observing the trenches. The casing of that
periscope is now at West
Point.
All together these descriptions of World War I were very
real and hold your intense
interest. I read them shortly after reading Rickenbacher's
autobiographical account of his
experiences, in last year's Lakeside Classic. Mr. Puttkammer did
not have the challenge of
shooting down German planes or balloons, but his description of
the German observation
structure was much better and earlier than Rickenbacher's visit
to it weeks later.
There were two papers on the Marshals of France, the first
(1938) about the office and
some of its appointed members. The name came from "Marea Seal"
or person in charge of
horses. The King's Marshal was then given the duty of counting
armed knights and retainers to
see if nobles' feudal obligations had been met. Later under
Louis XIV "marshal" became a
military rank and a group of Marshals could act as judges to
adjudicate disputes preventing
life-threatening duels. The French Revolution abolished Marshals
but Napoleon reinstituted the
office. The second Marshal paper (1939) was about Napoleon's
Marshals. They were a very
courageous group mostly very able generals, but they spent an
inordinate amount of time fighting
each other to achieve greater prominence. All too often they
would not even come to each other's
help during battle and each would claim greater importance after
a battle.
Papers twelve, thirteen and fourteen are diverse. The first
(1946) is a history of gambling
in the United States brought about by the author's experience as
a member of the Chicago Crime
Commission. Many gambling kingpins were criminals because if
they were managing illegal
gambling they had to engage in political corruption to prevent
enforcement of standing laws and if
engaged in legal gambling they often used criminal behavior to
beat down other groups trying to
enter the legal gambling arena. Mr. Puttkammer describes the big
five: roulette, poker, craps,
faro and lotteries including numbers, lotto and bingo. Really I
did not find this paper one of the
author's best although it does focus on the history of
gambling.
Number thirteen, "Museum Pieces of the Law" (1944) is a
somewhat interesting
compilation of the multiple changes in Common Law over the
centuries as certain features
became outmoded and old fashioned. These included such things as
the hosting of drinks by
capital crime prisoners before their hangings to prolong the time
when a possible pardon could
reach the execution site, or the beating of young boys when they
were shown a property line so
that they would remember it as possible witnesses later in their
lives. Early juries were all made
up of witnesses to a crime and only later did they become
uninformed peers listening to the
evidence. The accused brought his group (mostly family) because
any guilt was taken on by the
whole family and the plaintiff brought his "suite" swearing the
accused was guilty. This is where
the term "bringing suit" comes from. Trial by ordeal came to
England with the Normans. It
meant staging a "battle" between litigants or subjecting the
accused to an ordeal. The punishment
of witches in Salem was derived from this feature of Common Law.
Finally Parliament ended
these forms of Common Law in 1818.
Paper fourteen (1953) was a biography of an Irishman named
Blood born around 1618; he
fought as a revolutionary in Cromwell's successful campaign. He
was given an Irish estate in
payment for his military contribution. When Charles II came to
power Blood's estate was taken
back and given to the Duke of Ormonde. Blood spent the rest of
his life trying to hurt the Duke
of Ormonde and the English government, primarily in four major
plots. The first was to capture
the Duke's castle which was unsuccessful as an informer gave him
away. Several years later
Blood successfully recaptured a friend being transferred from
London to York prison by an armed
guard. The third plot was to kidnap and execute Duke Ormonde in
London. The Duke was
successfully kidnaped, but then the Duke riding behind his
kidnapper overturned the horse in a
mud puddle and was rescued. The final plot was to steal the
Crown Jewels from the Tower of
London. This action was almost successful but an armed son of
the caretaker came home
unexpectedly, disrupting the get away and they were all caught.
All the jewels were recovered
and everyone thought Blood would be hung, but he talked to
Charles II and was granted a full
pardon and a pension. Some years later he was arrested being
charged with plotting against the
powerful Duke of Buckingham and died of natural causes a few days
later in prison at age 61.
This is a very fine paper which the Club published.
Mr. Puttkammer's last paper "The Wonders They Saw and Said
They Saw", given in
December 1965 was a reread of his second paper with a different
title. He was given a fifty year
Club membership plaque in October 1973.
My father, Francis H. Straus I, was born in Chicago in 1895.
His mother was of New
England Puritan ancestry and his father a German immigrant from
Wurtzburg who was trained in
art history at the Sorbonne. He grew up in Clarendon Hills west
of Chicago, attended Harvard
College, graduating in 1916, and then received his medical
training at the Harvard Medical School
hurrying to finish and be a second lieutenant in the U. S. Army.
His army career was caring for
flu epidemic victims in a Massachusetts Army base. Following
this he did his internship at
Washington University in St. Louis and then returned to Chicago
and the Presbyterian Hospital
for his general surgical residency with Dr. Arthur Dean Bevan,
Chicago's leading surgeon at the
time.
After his training my father practiced general surgery and
some general practice; in 1924
he married Elizabeth Kales, Albert Kales' elder daughter, who was
then a Rush medical student.
My mother then fitted three children into her practice of general
and internal medicine, stopping
to add two more children before my father enlisted in the Army
Medical Corps in the Second
World War, as a major. He was trained in the west, then went to
Australia and New Guinea. He
returned to the States with a severe reaction to the synthetic
antimalarial drug atabrine. After
recovering he returned to his surgical practice, was elected
Chief of the medical staff at the
Presbyterian Hospital and successfully worked out its merger with
St. Luke's Hospital. He taught
medical students at Rush Medical College and residents in surgery
at both Presbyterian and Cook
County Hospitals. For many years he was the physician for the
First National Bank of Chicago, to
some extent because he knew Edward Eagle Brown, the Bank
president, son of Judge Brown
mentioned earlier.
My father was pushed into being a farmer by his wife who
wanted a connection to the land
and a sure way to feed her family if depression or war cut off
the food supply. He read very
widely and followed his wife's lead in their social interactions.
He stopped operating in 1968 but
kept his medical office open for another ten years before
retiring completely.
My father read a single paper entitled "Windfall" in October
1979. This presentation is
mostly a semantic playing with the meanings of windfall and
pratfall and anecdotal
autobiographical illustrations of windfalls. Personal pratfalls
he could not remember and this he
said must be an ego defense. Two of his windfall examples were
taken from his medical practice
describing a patient with a bowel obstruction being physically
examined causing an out rush of
gas, a "windfall", with relief of symptoms. Another patient
with a hyper-extended back and a
stiff smile on his face all led to a clear diagnosis of tetanus
infection which was successfully
treated. The windfall was when the patient's room door was
opened for my father's consultation
visit and the noise or light put the patient into recognizable
tetany which was the windfall for my
father's being able to make the diagnosis. He goes on to
describe Faraday in England inventing
the generator, a clear windfall which Pitt as a government
representative did not understand as a
windfall until Faraday pointed out that someday Pitt would tax
the use of generators. The author
goes on to describe democracy as a balance between windfalls and
pratfalls.
Altogether this is a short rather philosophical paper with
some autobiographical and a lot
of semantic aspects. My father wrote very well as a young man
majoring in creative writing in
college, but a career in medicine did not further that strong
beginning. He always said that when
he retired he would go back to writing, but when he did retire,
the energy was not there. If
someone enjoys writing, he should pursue it as much as possible
throughout his life, not save it
for specific periods.
Now at last we come to the last relative, myself, probably
the most difficult one for me to
include. I was born in Chicago in 1932, growing up on the Near
North Side, attending Francis W.
Parker School and then Harvard College, where I graduated in
1953. I then returned to Chicago
to enter the University of Chicago Medical School. It should be
noted here that the founders of
my high school and medical school were both members of the
Chicago Literary Club. While in
medical school I married Lorna Puttkammer, first child of the
Ernst Wilfred Puttkammer already
cited. Being attached to Chicago I have stayed on at the
University, completing my training in
pathology, moving up the academic ladder and practicing surgical
pathology for my career. It has
been very satisfying to help clinicians take the best kind of
care of their patients, teaching
undergraduates, medical students and residents, and writing some
scientific contributions which I
hope have helped push back the frontiers of medicine. I have
been involved in the American
Cancer Society, serving as president of the Chicago Unit and
later the Illinois Division, and been a
delegate to the national organization. At Mackinac Island I have
also held health care offices.
Back at the University of Chicago Hospital I have served as a
medical staff officer several times
and am currently vice president.
My wife and I have four children, love Mackinac Island and
travel, and are trying to figure
out how to celebrate the new Millennium. I have been a member
since 1966, of course urged into
the Club by my father-in-law, Mr. Puttkammer. My grandfather and
great uncle were long dead
before I even came as an invited guest. I have presented
fourteen papers to the Club. The first
(1969) was autobiographical about my childhood on our farm in
southern Michigan and the
second (1972) dealt with Mackinac Island starting with its
geology and working up to modern
times. A focus on this Island was logical for me because it
represents summer fun for four
generations of Packards, Puttkammers and Strauses, and was as
well the location of my parents'
honeymoon spending it in the Packard cottage on the Island.
The majority of my papers have been topical including
history. They usually start out as a
subject I wish to learn more about, then as I read and learn, the
interest turns to whether I can
generate an interesting paper utilizing the new knowledge.
Nature subjects I have covered are
honeybees (1975), llamas (1987) and tulips (1997). Percussion
music was the subject of "Clang,
Rumble Boom" (1973), initiated by fellow member William Petersen
who once expressed
curiosity about what the percussionist thinks about and also
because this author has no sense of
rhythm and wondered what it must be like to generate complex
rhythmic sounds. Then after
visiting Beauvais cathedral late one afternoon and being totally
impressed by its height, grace and
beauty I felt the desire to read up and write about Gothic
cathedral building (1978). Papers on
"Boats" (1985), "Bridges" (1985) and lighthouses in "Let there be
Light" (1990) were similar
subject interests.
A biography became a part of my contribution in 1982 when I
tried to write a short
biography of Mr. Puttkammer, trying to capture his kindness,
cheerfulness, liberal thinking, and
mental strength all in a paper. It was difficult. Then came two
history papers (1994 and 1995):
the first dealing with the American Revolution through the eyes
of my great great great
grandfather David Howe, and the second focusing on George
Washington in his younger years
fighting in the French and Indian war. Paper fourteen was a short
one given last year at the
Fortnightly joint meeting focusing on the history of Grant Park
and how Montgomery Ward
deserves credit for saving Grant Park as we know it today.
Currently we all should again fight to
protect the existing sight lines and park usage as the city is
planning to construct a theater and
concert complex called the Millennium Theater in the northwest
corner of Grant Park. It seems
to be constantly true that cities and businesses try to use
public park land for their own
projects.
Now you have heard about sixty six papers read to this Club
over a hundred year period
by a specific group of members not all genetically related but
certainly related. The subject matter
is quite variable, Mr. Packard being the most creative including
his own poetry, and Mr.
Puttkammer gave us the best history.
Following review of these papers, the question of whether
they were descriptively titled is
a good question. I think mostly they were valid titles, but not
always totally informative of the
paper's subject matter. My titles have been the least descriptive
of all the papers in this group. On
serious further thought I believe we should develop a Club policy
which allows each member to
list the title of a future paper in any way he or she wishes with
total creativity of expression. It
may be descriptive of the subject, camouflaged or totally
misleading. Then at the time the
postcard is generated, one and two weeks prior to the actual
reading, a within parentheses
description of the paper subject could be added so members could
actually refresh their memories
on the subject or realize that the subject is one they do not
wish to miss, in order to plan their
schedules most effectively. This proposal was submitted in
Franklin Bing's report, in April 1976,
on how to maintain the strength of the Chicago Literary Club. I
would like to see this proposal
discussed and possibly established.
In this series the length of the papers has been quite
variable, ranging between 14 double
spaced pages to 44. Most of the longer papers were by George
Packard. Maybe the Club was
less strict on the time rule currently in effect. I believe all
papers should be read in under an hour.
If this is not reasonable for the subject, then two separate
papers may be necessary for such longer
topics.
The limitation of subject matter to that not associated with
one's profession is another very
difficult question. The purpose: to discourage a Club member
from reading a long essay using
specialized jargon, focusing on personal successes or
discouragements, is obvious, but what
should be the Club's reaction to a professional talking about the
history of his profession or how
his profession relates to society as a whole? In this group of
papers the lawyers were much more
likely to bring in aspects of their profession than the
physicians, but basically only my grandfather
Kales went too far in generating his essay on estate planning.
If I wrote such a paper it would
cover genetic and morphologic features of breast carcinoma and
the most effective surgical,
radiation, endocrine and chemotherapies. Think how that would put
you to sleep!
It was quite interesting to me that Mr. Puttkammer gave an
illustrated paper as early as
1928. I thought that any presentation involving more than the
written word had not occurred
until much more recently. Now we have several papers a year
given with the use of projected
images and I could imagine that some creative Club member will
eventually combine music with
the written word. Certainly if we go back to our founding title
and preamble "literary" stands tall
and should remain our main form of communication. "Literary" is
maintained even when a
speaker is thoughtful enough to bring handouts in the form of
maps and illustrations or "objects"
to be shown that help the listener understand the subject being
discussed.
This paper could not have been written if the Club's archive
in the Newberry Library did
not exist. The earlier papers of the Chicago Literary Club are
for the most part lost forever as
would be the more recent ones except for the vision of Stanley
Pargellis who initiated the
Newberry Library archive for the Club. I am very grateful to him
for doing this and in time our
archive will become a greater and greater strength of the Club.
At the same time I praise the
starting of this invaluable collection I wish to criticize
several previous Chairmen of the
Publications Committee who have lost several years' of the Club's
papers entrusted to them before
turning them over to the Library. This should not happen and
such officers should take their
responsibilities seriously.
The wonderfully variable subject matter presented by these
sixty six papers is one of the
great strengths of this Club. Freedom of choice has really been
demonstrated. In the Club's
beginning years, with more focus on literary criticism, the
freedom of subject choice was probably
more restricted. I think we have come in the right direction.
Another great strength of the Club
is the rule that limits discussion of a paper at the time of
presentation to positive comments so the
writer does not feel he or she has to defend the choice of
subject or method of expression on the
evening of the reading.
After focussing your attention on this specific portion of
the last one hundred years, I
would like to end with my very strong wish for a continuingly
wonderful next century marked by
an energetic Chicago Literary Club which provides fascinating
papers and great conviviality
among its members.