HEROES
by
Howard B. Prossnitz
Delivered to The Chicago Literary Club May 18, 1998
Every night at dusk, a little boy at Number 6 Hafnerova Street in Bratislava pressed his
nose against the window pane on the second story facing the street and waited for the gas man to
come with his long torch and light up each of the street lamps. The little boy never got tired of
this ritual since it was magical to watch the lamps come alive. One foggy night, however, it was
different. This night, the gas man did not light the street lamps. Instead, he carried a ladder and
went from lamp to lamp wrapping each one in black bunting. The little boy was only four and half
years old. He did not understand what this change meant, but it left him with an ominous feeling.
He sensed that something was wrong. The little boy was my father and he was right. The date
was June 28, 1914. That day, a nineteen year old Serbian nationalist had assassinated Archduke
Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire. One month later, on July 28th,
Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia; and World War I began.
The assassination
was the first watershed event in a young life. There would be many more cataclysmic changes to
come. It is hard to comprehend how he and other Europeans of his generation managed to
survive, let alone adapt to these changes. He would witness the great events of the 20th Century:
World War I, World War II, the Holocaust, the Stalinization of Eastern Europe, the development
of the atomic bomb, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the upheaval of the 60's, Watergate, the
tearing down of the Berlin Wall, and the economic unification of Europe. In addition, there
would be technological changes that would have been impossible to predict : the birth and growth
of the aviation industry and commercial jet service, the Manhattan Project and the development of
nuclear weapons, the rise of the automobile, the space age, miracle drugs, the discovery of DNA,
communication satellites, and the personal computer revolution.
My father led an
incredible life and he will always rank as my first and foremost hero. Tonight, I will talk about
him and two other heros as well. One of whom was a hero of my father and you will have no
trouble recognizing him. The other came into being in the early 50's and he is entirely imaginary.
I introduced you to him at the Fortnightly three years ago. His name is William. When I get to
the period of my father's life when we were spending our summers in England, I will tell you a
few more of my imaginary hero's escapades.
My father Ernest was born on December
10, 1909 in Bratislava, then part of the Austrian Hungarian Empire. His father was a flour
merchant and he had three brothers and one sister. He did not talk much about his early years.
Despite the fact that he grew up in the middle of a war, I learned from my aunt that he had his fair
share of childhood games and adventures. For instance, he and his brothers routinely exited the
second floor of their house via an apple tree. They also they conducted various scientific
experiments involving firecrackers, tin cans and unwilling feline participants.
I
observed first-hand that he was lucky enough to form lifelong friendships. A young chubby boy
named Laczi Reiss, nicknamed Kimpi, was to become his best friend. I was not around for their
early games. I can only relate a reunion between them much later in life that summed up the
warmth of their relationship. It was in the mid-70's. My father and I were staying in the London
Hilton on Hyde Park. At that time all of the employees wore gray striped morning coats as their
everyday work attire. We were in the lobby, all was quiet, except for the murmurs of a few older
British ladies delicately sipping tea as the men with gray morning coats discretely served them.
All of a sudden, the quiet of the room was shattered by an ear piercing shout of "Barratzio". In
one corner of the lobby, I saw all 280 pounds of Kimpi (who was about 5" 6" tall) throwing both
arms skywards, shouting at my father in Hungarian and madly gesturing for us to come towards
him. He swallowed my father up in a bear hug and told us that we were going down to visit
Kimpi's aunt at Southend-on-Sea. This was an aunt he faithfully visited every Sunday afternoon.
When we asked how we were getting there, he told us not to worry, that he had a car and driver
waiting outside. The car turned out to be an Austin Mini Cooper. It seemed absolutely incapable
of holding Kimpi and the driver, much less the four of us. Somehow we all squeezed in and
hurtled down the wrong side of the road to an enjoyable tea.
My father took school seriously. He was a good student graduating at the top of his
secondary school class. He then went to law school at Comenius University where he studied
civil law and received a doctor of jurisprudence degree. He proved to be adept at languages and
became fluent in seven of them including Hungarian, Czech, Slovak, German, French, English and
Latin. Unfortunately, my brother and I did not pick up his skill at language. In fact, the only
Hungarian we learned was when my father would accidentally hit his thumb with a hammer which
happened on a regular basis at our house on Milburn Street in Evanston. Whenever that
happened, a torrent of Hungarian would ensue. At this point, I must ask that if there are any
Hungarian speaking people in the audience, that you plug your ears. Phoenetically, what he said
sounded like "oz anyad bidash kuva ketcha vitch iskka nek a nek nek." He refused to translate
this expression. It was only much later in life that I got a little insight into the gravity of these
words. My brother decided to try them out about twenty years later on a Hungarian waiter at
Galatoire's restaurant in New Orleans. His waiter sounded like he was Eastern European. Philip
asked him where he was from. He said Hungary. Philip responded that he knew a little
Hungarian and he wanted to try out an expression. He launched into the words I just quoted. In
response, the waiter remained stone-faced. He said nothing. Then he said, hold on a second, let
me get my brother out of the kitchen. He brought his brother out and Philip repeated the
expression. Finally, in a very somber tone, the brother whispered that while it was alright for
Philip to say that in New Orleans, that if he ever said it on the streets of Budapest, there was an
excellent chance that he would have his throat slit. So the mystery remains.
After
law school, my father started work as an apprentice to an older lawyer in Prague, but his legal
career was cut short by the events leading up to World War II. In 1938, Hitler was pushing
ahead with Operation Green, the code name for his plan to invade Czechoslovakia. The country
was the most prosperous and democratic of those in Central Europe. Its first two presidents,
Thomas Masaryk and Eduard Benes had helped it attain prosperity and political stability. Its
Achilles' heel, however, was the division between its ethnic minorities – the same problem that
nearly sixty years later led to the break up of the nation. Back then, the country had 10 million
Czechs and Slovaks, 1 million Hungarians, 500,000 Ruthenians, 80,000 Poles and 3 million
Germans. Hitler ruthlessly exploited the situation by encouraging Konrad Henlein, the leader of
the Sudeten German Party to make uncompromising demands on behalf of the Germans in the
region. Incredibly enough, the leaders of England, France, and Czechoslovakia acceded to these
demands and surrendered the Sudetenland to Germany, but as we know the policy of
appeasement failed.
It was on September 30, 1938, that Neville Chamberlain, Edouard
Dadier of France, Hitler and Mussolini met in Munich and agreed to Hilter's demands for the
Sudetenland. Chamberlain returned to England to announce "peace for our time". The same
person who knew at age four and a half that something was wrong had no problem understanding
at age twenty-eight that the Munich peace agreement was a bargain with the devil. My father
managed to get a visa to leave the country in 1938 and he went to England. On March 15, 1939,
the German army entered Prague. Hitler boasted that "Czechoslovakia has ceased to
exist".
For a while, my father worked in a shoe repair store in London. He then got a
job at the office of an English solicitor. With the outbreak of the war, he joined the Czech army
in exile. It was in England that my father encountered the person who would rank as his greatest
hero. He caught a glimpse of him one day in London walking out of the Admiralty building
wearing a bowler hat, dark three piece suit, bow tie, gold watch chain, leaning on an umbrella and
chomping on a cigar. It was Winston Churchill. Churchill's books and some of his well known
quips became staples in our household. Not surprisingly, my parent's Golden Retriever bore the
name Winston. The Churchillian anecdote that was most often cited involved Nancy Witcher
Astor, a native Virginian who was the first woman to become a member of the House of
Commons. Her husband was a proponent of appeasement. Churchill had publicly said that an
"Astorite" was someone who is in the habit of feeding crocodiles in the hope that he will be eaten
last. Shortly after he made this pronouncement, he was invited to Cliveden, the Astor's country
house in Buckinghamshire. After dinner when Lady Astor was pouring coffee for Churchill, she
said, "Winston, if I were your wife, I'd poison your coffee". To which Churchill immediately
responded, "If I were your husband, I'd drink it". The other favorite anecdote was when an
imbibed Churchill careened into a woman at the House of Commons who said, "Winston, you are
drunk and what's more, you are disgustingly drunk". He responded, "and you madam are ugly,
and disgustingly so, but at least when I wake up tomorrow, I will be sober".
My father
was a firm believer in the value of a regular daily schedule of exercise, work, letter writing, and
eating. He admired and aspired to Churchill's daily regimen in the early 1930's as described by
William Manchester in The Last Lion. At his country house of Chartwell, Churchill maintained
an absolutely dictatorial routine. He would wake at 8:00 a.m. to a tray of orange juice and a full
English breakfast. He would then have his first bath of the day, 98 degrees and a tub two-thirds
full. Once immersed in the tub, it would be filled to the brim and the temperature elevated to 104
degrees. He would then don a dark blue velvet bath robe, return to bed, and over the next two
hours digest the morning papers, The Times, The Daily Telegraph and the Daily Worker as he
sipped weak scotch and sodas -- always Johnny Walker Red.
He never got drunk,
but there was always alcohol in his bloodstream, particularly by the end of the evening, when he
had consumed two scotches, a glass or two of champagne, two brandies and a highball. He
insisted on the same brandy named Hine. When Jan Christian Smuts, the South African prime
minister arrived with a gift of South African brandy, Churchill told him, "My dear Smuts, this is
excellent, but it is not brandy". The next two hours of Churchill's morning would be devoted to
reading correspondence and dictating responses. At 1:15, lunch was served. The preferred dish
was Irish stew. Guests could include Bernard Baruch, Leon Blum, Albert Einstein and Charlie
Chaplin. After lunch, Churchill would religiously feed the fish, ducks and swans in his artificial
lakes. He would then head for the outbuilding that he had designed as an art studio and paint for
several hours. He found painting to be an excellent form of relaxation. A two hour nap would
ensue; and then a family card game at 5:00 p.m. At 7:00 p.m. he would have his second bath of
the day and be dressed for dinner. His daily activities were assisted by a staff of eighteen
servants, including a cook, butler, valet, footman, gardener, assistant gardener, two secretaries,
and others. The staff was an integral part of his routine. For instance, before dinner, a valet
would dress him in his evening jacket.
Dinner was to be served at 8:30 p.m.,
although Churchill was often late. Iced champagne at dinner time was expected. Among the
foods likely to be on the dinner menu were clear soup, oysters, caviar, pate de foie gras, trout,
lamb, lobster, dressed crab, scampi, sole, roast beef, Yorkshire pudding, and chocolate eclairs. At
11:00 p.m., after brandy and cigars were passed around, he would usher his guests to their rooms.
His serious work day would then begin. He would return to his study to write. The study at
Chartwell was the oldest part of the house and dated back to 1086. It was built twenty years after
the Battle of Hastings. Churchill usually wrote or dictated while standing before a high desk of
his own design. Young Oxford graduates were hired at low wages to do his historical research.
Their reports would be digested between bursts of dictation. Although he had a mediocre
academic record at Harrow which precluded him from attending Oxford or Cambridge and
required him to enroll at the military school of Sandhurst, his powers of concentration were
formidable. It required two shorthand typists to keep pace with him. If the secretaries
interrupted him or needed time to change a ribbon, he would become extremely impatient
demanding to know why they were so slow. Sometime between 2:00 a.m. and 4:00 a.m., he
would call it a day and leave the secretaries to clean up and organize the ribbons and carbon
copies for the next day. Who knows what he would have accomplished if he had had Word
Perfect 7.1 -- it would have probably slowed his production since his one encounter with a
dictaphone was disastrous. After dictating alone for an entire night, the next morning his staff
found that the entire tape was blank. He swore off any further use of the machine.
It was in England that my father met my mother. She was working as a nurse at a hospital
in a small town in Essex called Rochford. Rochford was the location of her family home,
Talgarth. Coincidentally, her father was also named Ernest. He was a successful timber
merchant. He had the idea of dredging an estuary of the Thames to allow barges laden with
lumber from Scandanavia to deliver their freight directly to towns in Southeast England without
having to be unloaded onto lorries in London.
My father was intrigued by the English,
especially their sense of humor, even it was sometimes unintended. For instance, during the war,
he was asked to give a talk to a group of British officers about the Czech army in exile. He later
said that the occasion brought a premature end to his public speaking career. Immediately after
he finished his speech, the British Major General in charge said, "Thank you very much, Captain
Prossnitz, for your most informative remarks and I must tell you that I am struck by what a close
resemblance the Czech language bears to English".
As the war came to an end, he
was in charge of repatriating to Czechoslavakia those Czechs who had fled to the Lowlands,
meaning Belgium and Holland. He briefly worked for the Czechoslovak Airlines, and then went
back to Prague, as a representative of Sabena Belgian Airlines. Once again, he sensed trouble in
his native land. The political situation in Czechosolovakia was deteriorating as the Communist
Party ascended. For the second time, he had to leave his country. He decided that the United
States would be the best place to raise a family. A 1948 passenger manifest for the Queen Mary
records his passage to New York. A small gathering was held in Manhattan at the apartment of
one the American Prosnitz's. He expected financial help to get started, particularly since part of
the family had done well and lived in fancy apartments on Sutton Place. Instead of money, he was
given this sage advice, "don't worry about making it in this country ... here even an nincompoop
can prosper ... just pick a field and do a halfway decent job at it, and after five years, you will be
considered an expert." Parenthetically, I note that as I enter my fourth year of plaintiffs' class
action work, I remind my wife of this advice.
The first job that he had in this country
was working on a chicken farm in Connecticut. He quickly realized that it was not for him. He
returned to Sabena Airlines in New York and he was assigned the job of Midwest Regional Sales
Manager which necessitated his moving to Chicago. Sabena had its office at 6 North Michigan
Avenue and for the next thirty years, my father would work within one half block of that location.
He drove around the Midwest promoting Sabena, not only for travel to Belgium, but also to the
Belgian Congo. At that time, the Congo was a colony of Belgium and remained so until 1960.
Sabena offered regular flights to Leopoldville and my father was a frequent visitor. He displayed
a knack for public relations considering this headline that appeared in the Chicago Herald
American of February 1, 1953, "Africa Wonders Amaze Chicago Visitor". The Chicago Tribune
of February 15, 1953 reported on his trip under the heading, "Praises Belgian Congo as a Good
Vacation Region". The article quoted him as saying "it's wonderful vacation country" and "the
Congo is only 48 hours flying time from New York, and just three more from Chicago".
According to the Herald American:
Ernest P. Prossnitz, regional manager for Sabena Belgian Airlines, who just
returned from a whirlwind four-week, 25,000 mile trip of the continent, told The Herald
American: It beats anything I've ever seen—and I've been fortunate enough to travel over most of
the globe. When the tribesmen there dance, they go all out. They finally work themselves up
into such a frenzy that they become nearly hysterical – and they culminate their celebrations with
wild orgies that put western imagination to shame.
My father's training as a lawyer was reflected by another part of the
trip that he recounted to the Herald American. The newspaper wrote:
Among the things that interested him the most, Prossnitz
revealed, was a native tribunal composed of chiefs and elders of several tribes. The particular
case being tried before it as he was present concerned a young native who complained that his
wife – for whom he had paid two cows – had left him after several months. Returning to her
brother, she had taken with her most of the household belongings. The tribunal's illuminating
decision: The plaintiff was entitled to the household goods, but only one cow. After all, he had
use of the wife for several months, and paying a servant for equivalent services would have cost
the plaintiff at least the price of the bovine.
It was at Rochford that I acquired my taste for
the William books. Trips to the candy store in Rochford were coupled with trips to the local
book store where I amassed William books. To me the geography of Rochford was the perfect
backdrop for reading about my imaginary hero. There was a stream that had to be crossed by
stepping stones, an old bomb shelter in my grandparent's back yard, and innumerable hedges and
apple trees. For those of you who were not at the Fortnightly three years ago, William is the
hero of a series of books written by the English author Richmal Crompton. As explained on the
inner jacket of William the Pirate, there is only one William and his name is a byword for
irrepressible boyhood.
Consider, for example, how William dealt with the problem of
a new neighbor. The house next door to William had been unoccupied for a long time and
William had begun to look upon its garden as his own property. It with a sense of personal
aggrievement that William heard it had been let. The new occupant was a "tall, powerfully made
man with a face suggestive of a gorilla suffering from acute indigestion". Upon his arrival, the
new neighbor promptly threw back into William's yard an avalanche of pots, pans, tins and rubbish
that William had been storing in the neighbor's garden. The new neighbor's indiscretions did not
stop there. His misdeeds included chasing William with a stick, poisoning a neighborhood dog,
and assaulting William's older brother. Fortuitously, William discovered a ventilation hole in the
wall of the neighbor's house that abutted a portion of William's own garden. He noticed wires
near the opening of the hole and he gave them an exploratory probe. Immediately thereafter, he
heard the sound of the neighbor's doorbell jangling. At this point, William's lips parted in a
seraphic smile. There would be no need of dead cats for the neighbor's basement.
William then asked his mother for permission to start his own vegetable plot in part of
his family's garden. His mother greeted this as a good sign that he was beginning to appreciate
the beauty of nature. He went to work on the garden. An attentive observer would have noticed
that during that time, the doorbell in the neighbor's house rang six times. On the seventh time, the
master of the house hid behind the front door with a stick. When the bell rang, he hurled himself
with so much violence at the imaginary culprit that he fell down the front steps.
William was too much of an artist to overdo things. He waited until the neighbor's
house had settled down to a normal routine before resuming his gardening. Finally, after an
appropriate period of quiet, he rang the bell while the local constable was outside. This resulted
in the neighbor beating the policeman on the head with a stick. Assault charges were brought, a
stiff fine was assessed, and most importantly, the the neighbor had to leave town. William's
behavior never came into question. When his father returned from an out-of-town trip, his mother
reported, "Oh no dear, William was quite well behaved all the time he was there, I told you. He
got this craze for gardening and hardly stirred out of the garden".
Trips to Talgarth blurred the line between fact and the fiction of the Just William books. When I
went back to reread the William stories, I found two episodes which when merged together bear
an uncanny resemblance to an actual event at Talgarth. Chapter II of More William is entitled
"Rice-Mould" and Chapter III is "William's Burglar". In Chapter II, William befriends a
neigborhood girl who complains bitterly about having to eat rice mould every day. William
volunteered that his parents were having a party that evening where buckets of cream blanc
mange would be served and he offered to bring her some. She was swept off her feet by this
proposal, until William after a series of misadventures, showed up with the goods. The girl's look
of ecstasy changed to fury as she spooned into what William had brought by mistake: a soppy,
dripping mound of rice mould.
In the burglar chapter, William makes friends with a
man missing both ears. The man introduces himself as Mr. Blank. William invites Mr. Blank for
tea who helps himself not only to sandwiches and cake, but also to all of the family's silverware.
Entirely by accident, William recovers the lost articles when he blocks Mr. Blank's attempted
escape through a second story window.
Now for the episode which actually occurred:
the real life merger of the Rice Mould and Burglar chapters. Back in the 40's, my mother's family
had a new cook whose specialty was lemon mange which is close enough to cream blanc mange.
Unfortunately, the dessert was not appreciated by the family, a fact which as I will explain, was
not disclosed to the cook. Whenever this new creation was concocted and the cook returned to
the kitchen, the french doors of the dining room were opened and the lemon mange discretely
dumped into the adjoining bushes. One summer evening, after coming home from the seaside, the
family found that the house had been burgled. The intruder had chosen to make his exit and
entrance through the dining room french doors. The local constable had no trouble confirming
the identity of the burglar. His shoes were soaked in lemon mange.
I often
contemplated how I could apply William's wit and wisdom to my own life. When my parents
briefly considered removing me from Haven Jr. High School to send me to The Leys School in
Cambridge where my uncle had attended, I thought of how William had handled a similar
situation. His parents had decided that William should be shipped off to boarding school. They
invited the headmaster of the school to their house to meet William. In preparation for this
meeting, William had confidentially told his father that the headmaster was deaf. William
imparted the same confidential advice to the headmaster. The meeting began with the two men
screaming at each other. William's older sister was going to a costume ball that evening dressed
as a 17th century maiden in a long flowing black robe. William told the headmaster that his house
was haunted and that one ghost in particular, a woman dressed in black was often seen.. To
prove the point, a few minutes later, a black robed woman in 17th century dress floated across the
lawn. The headmaster fled in fright. That was the end of the campaign to send William to
boarding school.
In 1958, my father started his own business at 6 North Michigan
Avenue called Special Tours and Travel. His relatives had been right that in the United States
you are considered an expert after spending five years in a field. The Chicago Tribune
announcement about his new travel business heralded him as "dean of the foreign airline officials
in Chicago". His new agency specialized in African safaris. This specialty was a natural
outgrowth of his many trips to the Belgian Congo. He overcame his natural intolerance for all
things mechanical in order to go on safaris himself and he learned how to shoot a rifle. He more
or less mastered a high powered Winchester and managed to escape with only minor damage to
himself – just a few cuts above the right eye one time when the recoil of the rifle put the
telescopic lens into his forehead.
The highlight of his hunting career came in 1965
when he went on a shikar in India. Shikar is the Hindu word for safari. He kept a comprehensive
diary in which he dutifully recorded all the events. He explained first that the tiger that he and his
hunting companions were after had terrorized local villagers by attacking their domestic livestock.
Over the years, the oral history of this fact on Milburn Street evolved to the point where the tiger
had devoured several men, women and children.
The procedure for getting any tiger,
man-eating or not, is to tie a bullock or young goat to the base of a tree and to spend the night in
a tree hut known as a Mashan with a rifle and battery powered searchlight attached to the rifle.
When the tiger goes for the bait, the searchlight goes on and you have time to get off one shot,
maybe two if you are lucky. I will let my father's own words from his diary describe what
happened next:
Another glorious silvery moonlit night. Absolute perfect
stillness broken by the mighty plaintive roar coming nearer and nearer. There was no mistaking
the King of the Jungle was coming. All chattering of monkeys, the shrill callings of owls and
nightbirds completely stopped. The still night air was filled with full throated drawn out plaintive
sounding roars ending in broken notes. We could not see him, but his heavy footsteps and the
roar clearly indicated the direction. Difficult to describe our feelings, here we sat in perfect safety
armed with the most powerful modern weapons, yet the unseen beast's commanding roars
overtook us. The tiger passed by howling his cries completely ignoring the bait and us perched
breathlessly up in the tree.
We skip ahead four days to the following journal
entry:
Accompanied by best wishes of entire group, we set out on the usual routine. Mashan
was comfortable. After darkness fell, two wild bears came, tugged at leg of goat and
disappeared. Soon stealthy noises and usual hypertension when every breath is an effort.
Crunching noises came from bait's direction. The guide's excited comment to me, it's the tiger,
are you ready? He flashed on his light and caught a huge voraciously eating tiger. Remembering
instructions, I aimed at shoulder and pressed trigger. The tiger jumped, got entangled in bushes
behind him and I could not see him anymore and the light went off.
Next thing I heard was the guide saying that I had misfired and we needed to keep
the light on. The other guide said the light was out for the night, he had mixed up the wires.
So there was no second shot and we started to theorize as to what could have
happened. No doubt the tiger was hit, but was he hit in a vital part and did he manage to escape?
The only assurance I could get from guide was that if I aimed carefully from rested position, hit
him in the shoulder, I had nothing to worry about. The tiger would be found dead in the morning.
I had the vague feeling that my shot went too low. Anyway, there was nothing to be done but to
settle down for the night. To follow the wounded tiger during the night was equal to suicide.
Slept a few hours. The only encouraging signs of a possible tiger kill were the
increasing chattering, nervous jumping around of monkeys as daybreak approached. According
to guide, this meant that a tiger – dead or alive was around.
At 6:00 a.m., the jeep and crew of trackers arrived. First thing, tea was brewed
and then trackers with teeth chattering started to look around for tiger. Gun at ready, I slowly
followed them. We covered some 100 yards when we spotted the tiger lying on his side in the
grass. Another shot just to make sure he was dead.
Several villagers were sent for and the tiger fastened to the hood of the jeep. The
news of this particular bad tiger's end spread like wildfire. The entire populace of two villages
turned out jabbering, gesticulating and laughing. Garlands of flowers were put around my neck.
Hordes of children ran alongside the jeep. He had been known as a marauder for 4
years.
If anyone doubts the veracity of these entries, my brother has the 8 ½ by 11 black and
white photograph which shows my father looking like Ernest Hemingway sporting a white beard,
with garlands of flowers around his neck, a tiger lying in front of him, and a dozen women and
children standing around him.
His travel business proved to be successful. He
arranged group trips for the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations, The Lincoln Park Zoological
Society, and Marlin Perkins' Wild Kingdom Show. He arranged trips for many well known
people including the Mellons, Arab shieks, prominent Chicagoans such as Gaylord Donnelly of
Donnelly and Co., Byron Smith of the Northern Trust Bank, and William Lane of Lane
Industries. At one time in the early 70's, he asked me if I had ever heard of a musical group who
had contacted him about going on safari. Their name was Sly and the Family Stone. I explained
to him that they had just triggered a near riot by failing to show up for a free concert at Grant
Park and he decided that they were not a good business prospect. He also arranged a number of
trips for Albert Hopkins which got me a summer job at Hopkins and Sutter, delivering coffee and
cookies to Albert Hopkins twice a day.
Like me, he valued club memberships. He
was a regular at the swimming pool at the Illinois Athletic Club, an early member of the Chicago
Adventurer's Club, an attendee at the annual meetings of Safari Club International, and a member
of Evanston's Inside U.N. which had mock General Assembly meetings.
My
father's business led to frequent travel for him including the Antarctic, Norway, the Galapagos
Islands, mainland China, Japan, Korea, Hawaii, Australia, Portugal, Mexico, South America,
Alaska, Italy, France, Switzerland, the Falkland Islands, Austria, Hungary, Bermuda, Aruba,
Antigua and Martinique.
As I told you, things mechanical were not my father's
strong point. One year, for our summer vacation, we rented a houseboat to spend a week going
down the Mississippi River. My father wisely turned the command of the boat over to my four
year old brother who sat happily at the steering wheel guiding us down the Mighty Mississippi.
Unfortunately, the shearing pin on the engine broke frequently. We spent a large part of that
vacation on the roof of the houseboat waving red towels for help. Not only did the shearing pin
regularly fail, but it managed to do so at the worst possible times. We terrorized the entire beach
population at one small Wisconsin town as we drifted uncontrollably through their cordoned off
swimming area.
Other less stressful vacations included Bermuda, the Canadian
Rockies, Salcombe in Devonshire, Cabourg in Normandy, France, Montreux, Switzerland,
Winter Park, Aspen, Vail, Sanibel and Sarasota. We also went back to Budapest for a hunting
convention.
Like his hero Churchill, my father was a prolific letter writer, many to old
friends and relatives in Europe, business associates in Africa, but also a steady stream of
complaint letters to persons closer to home. The replies were varied and interesting. On one
occasion, he wrote to the Director of Ravinia and complained bitterly about the lack of a dress
code and in particular, the shocking sight of a man without a shirt walking around the lawn at a
concert. The Director wrote back saying that he could not agree with my father and that in fact,
he often found the sight of a bare-chested man quite appealing.
Like Churchill, my
father did not get along with mechanical aids to writing, particularly word processing programs
and computers. He complained that his documents would mysteriously disappear in mid-stream
and he was convinced that his Commodore 64 computer purchased at Toys R Us was inhabited
by demons. When I went up to investigate, I saw that many documents had been stored with
titles such as "ed" and "ing". Somehow, he was involuntarily saving documents in mid-word.
After moving to Galena in the early 80's, my father continued working on a reduced
basis. His last safari was in 1995 at age 85. I began my talk by telling you about how the lights
were not lit on the streets in Bratislava. On January 24th of this year (ironically the same month
and day that Churchill died), a light went out in my life as my father passed away at the age of
eighty-eight. The way he died exemplified the way he lived: with courage, dignity, and wit.
Although he had not been a smoker, he came down with inoperable lung cancer in 1995 and lived
for three more years. He also survived a stroke and two heart attacks. In October, 1996, he had
his first heart attack. When he met his cardiologist, Dr. Loukinen, he explained to her that her last
name had to be of Finnish origin. She acknowledged that it was, and he then gave her a thumbnail
sketch in linguistics explaining how closely related Finnish is to the Hungarian language. More
recently, when one of his medical emergencies required dialing 9 1 1 to take him by ambulance to
the hospital, six or seven paramedics stood around him scrambling to fasten various wires to his
body, while frantically trying to get his pulse and blood pressure. In the midst of all this chaos, he
raised his hand and asked for silence. He said, "Gentlemen, let's go over this one more time, we
are going to the hospital, not the cemetery, does everybody understand?" His mind stayed sharp
to the very end. He was discussing European politics forty-eight hours before he died.
Like that foggy night in Bratislava, it was a misty, foggy day in Galena when we had
the family funeral service. The sun would periodically break through the clouds and the mist
giving the snow and ice covered hills an eerie, surreal feeling. We said good-bye to him with
these words from Hamlet:
He was a man, take him for all in all.
I shall not look upon his like again.
Now cracks a noble heart. Good night, sweet prince.
And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.
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