Baseball in an (Almost) Empty Stadium

If Major League Baseball starts a 2020 season, undoubtedly there will be no fans in the stands. No vendors, no ushers, very few security people and downsized team staffs. The White Sox played the Orioles in an empty Camden Yards (a few scouts were allowed in) on April 29, 2015, because of disturbances in Baltimore after the controversial death of Freddie Gray a few days earlier. The White Sox have played before some very small crowds throughout the years – official attendance numbers are useless as they don’t count the actual fans in the stands – and I attended one of them.

Comiskey Park, Sept. 30, 1990

The White Sox were playing a one-game series versus the New York Yankees on Wednesday, April 19, 1967. The day before, the Sox had defeated the eventual American League champion Boston Red Sox, also in a one-series game, 5-2, before an announced crowd of 1,313. My father was having varicose-vein surgery that Wednesday in what is now Northwestern Memorial Hospital. My mother would travel into the city to be with him. As a senior in my last semester in high school, I figured this would be a great day to ditch school and catch a ballgame. I enlisted my friend Andy Wald to go with me.

Comiskey Park main entrance, Sept. 30, 1990

After my mother departed, I picked up Andy in our 1960 Chevrolet Impala convertible and headed to the South Side. The day was sunny but cold, probably about 40 degrees. Traffic was light on the Edens, Kennedy and Dan Ryan, and we arrived at Comiskey Park well in advance of game time. Figuring for a small crowd, we bought general-admission tickets and settled down in seats behind the far end of the Sox dugout on the 3^rd-base side.

Those attending the 2015 game in Baltimore remarked about the ability to hear various sounds not audible during normal conditions. So it was with an almost empty house. We heard the umpires – most likely 3^rd-base umpire Frank Umont – singing along with the National Anthem and the infield chatter. Some guys a few seats over were yelling at Sox 3^rd baseman Don Buford, probably with racist crap, and Buford in turn traded insults.

Frank Umont, 1955 Bowman card

Along about the 3^rd inning, the sun went behind the grandstand, and the temperature sunk into the 30s. We weren’t dressed for the occasion, so we headed out to the right-field lower deck, where the sun still shone brightly and most of the fans had migrated. From that day until the ballpark closed in 1990, I usually sat in right field – especially in the first row of the upper deck behind the auxiliary scoreboard – on both warm and cool days.

The pitchers were two of the game’s great: Whitey Ford for the Yankees and Tommy John for the White Sox. The Yankees defeated the Sox, 3-0, in what was Ford’s second-to-last MLB victory. Whitey pitched a complete game, yielding 7 hits, 2 strikeouts and 2 walks. John lasted 5 innings, giving up all 3 runs, 2 of which were unearned on an error by normally adept 1^st-baseman Tommy McCraw. Chicago native Jim O’Toole and Wilbur Wood each hurled 2 innings of shutout, 1-hit baseball. Mickey Mantle, now a 1^st baseman, went 0-5 on 3 groundouts and 2 flyouts, lowering his batting average to .100. He retired after the next season, in which I saw him play in my first game in Yankee Stadium.

Whitey Ford and Tommy John

The White Sox would contend in a four-team pennant race with the Red Sox, Tigers and Twins until the final week of the season. A doubleheader loss to the 10^th-place Kansas City A’s, who had won 2 of their last 13 games, on September 27 was the near-death blow; a 1-0 loss to the Washington Senators (the run was scored in the 1^st inning) two days later was the coup de grace.

Down to the Wire, an excellent book on the 1967 AL pennant race

The announced attendance was 3,040, but I’ve always guessed 350 was about it. There were so few that for a time I feared my father would see me on television from his hospital bed.  Ironically, I found one of those 350-some fans after he posted one of my Comiskey Park photos on his blog. It is the subject of my first blog post. It turns out that, like me, he was at the final White Sox game in Yankee Stadium on September 18, 2008. I wrote him I was willing to bet my life that he and I were the only people left who attended both 1967 and 2008 games. https://brulelaker.blogspot.com/2010/10/where-baseball-photography-and-blogging.html

Comiskey Park, Sept. 30, 1990

The game ended in a snappy 2 hours and 17 minutes, plenty of time to get Andy, the captain of the New Trier East track team, back to the suburbs in time for a triangular meet vs. Evanston and Highland Park. I drove directly to Highland Park; no track meet could be found. Figuring it was at New Trier, we headed south to Winnetka, only to find no meet there. I offered to drive Andy to Evanston – we probably would have made it on time – but he declined. The next day in one of classes, a fellow seemingly with no inkling walked up to me and said, “How do you like that? Andy Wald, the captain of the track team, missed a meet to go to a Sox game.” I replied, “Yes, I know. I drove him.” There was no reply.

It’s anybody’s guess whether there will be a baseball season in 2020. One source says it will cost owners far less to cancel the season than to play a partial schedule and thus are making all sorts of ridiculous proposals, figuring the players union will reject them and be scapegoated for no baseball this season. If there is a season, I have one suggestion: no canned crowd noise. Back in the 50s, when the Sox were idle, WCFL would carry an out-of-town game with an announcer reading the play-by-play from a ticker-tape feed with a steady crowd soundtrack. I’m not that nostalgic.

My Last Dance

The Standard Club of Chicago, founded in 1869 by a group of German-Jewish men refused membership in the Chicago Club, closed the doors to its clubhouse today. The building had been basically shuttered since mid-March because of COVID-19; on April 4, the board of directors announced it would not reopen. The clubhouse at 320 S. Plymouth Court, designed by noted architect Alfred Kahn and completed in 1926, is listed for sale, and the club’s fate remains uncertain.

The Standard Club, 320 S. Plymouth Court

This post will neither recap the club’s august history nor discuss the factors that led to its closing; many have or will provide such commentary. I’m writing about the main attraction for many members, which kept me there for 23 years: basketball.

The Standard Club lobby

My highest basketball achievement was honorable mention intramural all-stars as a high-school senior, a half-decent honor considering there were about 600 boys in my graduating class. I’ve loved the game but stopped playing for several years because of family, work and a place to play. Then I heard about the Standard Club games.

Center court, The Standard Club gymnasium

A friend since age 12, with whom I’d attended summer camp, religious school and high school, played in the Monday night and Monday, Wednesday and Friday noon games. The club, he told me, has a short full-court, and games are 4-on-4. I’d also be one of the taller guys if I joined (no discussion of stereotypes here). During one of the membership drives, I was accepted in January 1997. At the time I was a senior vice president at an international public relations firm, so the membership would also be useful professionally.

The Standard Club gymnasium. The blue lines are for pickleball

For what one member called “The Last Gentleman’s Game in the Country,” I stepped back on to the 6th-floor court at age 48. Players ranged from 20-somethings to 70 and older. Unwritten rules were simple: no trash-talking, defense calls the fouls and no rough stuff. The last would be broken in league games, tournaments and by occasional hacks or clothes lines. Games were 8 minutes by the clock, and the Health & Fitness Center (H&FC)  supervisors made the teams; rather than winner-stays-on, players were rotated to ensure nobody sat for more than one game at a time. Half-court games resulted if 16 or more members showed up.

One 4-man team wore the color-of-the-day mesh pullovers

Basketball was only played on Monday nights when the games originated in the early 1960s. This produced an interesting story, passed down through the decades. One of the players met the wife of another player, who told him, “I think it’s great you guys play on Monday and Wednesday nights and then go out for dinner.” She eventually found out the truth. They are no longer married.

The drop ceiling limited the length of shots

The basketball players’ annual event – The Hall of Shame Dinner – was held annually for several years, interrupted for five years until one final get-together last year. A Hall of Shame Award winner is chosen, based on a minimum of 10 years’ playing experience; ability (or lack thereof) is not applicable. The dinner featured a speaker from the sports world, preferably basketball. The best during my tenure was the late Norm Van Lier, which included tales of hanging out with Led Zeppelin; last year’s speaker was Matt Gordon, an assistant coach of the Final Four Loyola University Ramblers and brother of H&FC Director Mike Gordon. A side note: When Loyola qualified for the 2018 NCAA tournament, the players anted up to send Mike to Dallas to see the first round. After the Ramblers made it to the second round, we dug deeper into our pockets to send Mike to Atlanta. Against all odds, Loyola made it to the Final Four in San Antonio, and we came through once again for Mike’s plane fare and hotel room.

3-on-3 Tournament, 2002. Only three other members played in the 2020 tournament

The 3-on-3 Tournament, started in 2002, was played for the last time on February 22, 2020. Eight teams are assigned by the H&FC staff for the half-court games. Each game is 12 minutes or if one team scores 10 baskets. My first and only win came in 2012, when we tied a semifinal game on a desperation last-second shot, won on free throws and went on to take the title. The spirited competition features mostly guys in their 20s and 30s. At least two broken noses resulted during the years. After several year’s hiatus, hitting age 70 and sensing this would be the last 3-on-3 tournament, I signed up, hoping not to embarrass myself. Only one other player was older; the two of us were more than 10 years senior to the next youngest players. I held my own; this time we lost in the semifinals on tie-breaker free throws.

3-on-3 Tournament, 2020. John Gable (holding ball) at 73 was the oldest player

I almost forgot to include a tribute to my great friend, Marc Wayne, the other H&FC staffer. The Berwyn native supervised nearly every game, seated at his "office" where he ran the scoreboard (for time, not scores except for league games) and made up the teams. On occasions he would fill in when we were short on personnel, holding back on lofting his soft lefthanded jump shots in deference to the members. His sophomoric humor is loved by all. I'll miss his shouting, "He's no Fred Biletnikoff" every time I muff a pass.

Marc Wayne's "office": the scorer's table

During these 23 years, I’ve had an angioplasty, partial nephrectomy, torn meniscus and extreme lower back pain; each time I stepped back on the court it was like getting a significant part of my life back. The friendships on and off the court transcend a simple game. We did business together, dined together, mourned the loss of thankfully only a few of our stalwarts together, attended Sox games together, watched a son play college basketball together and played basketball outdoors on summer Saturday mornings some 40 miles northwest of Chicago together. The club has entered into an agreement with another downtown club to use its facilities; I've elected not to sign up. Until I find another game, the summer games might be it for my basketball career. If so – and this was My Last Dance – at least I had a final hurrah.

I walked off the court for the last time, April 13, 2020

A Tale of Two Cities

Last September, we spent 5 days and 5 nights each in Paris and Berlin. It was our second trip to Paris – our first was in 1975 – and first to Berlin. Both cities have very interesting dynamics relating to life there during the 1930s and 1940s, most notably the rule by the Nazis.

Arc de Triomphe and Brandenburg Gate

For years, even decades, Jews have avoided traveling to Germany, for the memories of Nazi horrors still stood either fresh in memories or had been handed down to subsequent generations. It was the same mindset that prevented people from buying German-manufactured automobiles. Now, almost 75 years after the fall of Nazi regime, those barriers have mostly fallen, in part because of the German people taking unflinching responsibility for the actions of their government and people.

After returning from our trip, a relative remarked he found Berlin a bit “creepy,” although it had been a few years since he had been there. I responded I’d tried to keep from dwelling on what was as opposed to what is now. In addition, the only Nazi government building still standing is the Reichsluftfahrtministerium (Ministry of Aviation), a Brutalist building housing the German Finance Ministry. Hitler’s bunker is below a nondescript surface parking lot, and all other Nazi buildings were either destroyed by Allied bombings or postwar demolitions. The most interesting parts of the city turned out to be in the former East Berlin rather than in West Berlin.

Reichsluftfahrtministerium (Ministry of Aviation)

Berlin has three major sites in the city featuring education about the Jews of German and the Holocaust. Best known are The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe and Information Centre, also known as the Holocaust Memorial; Topography of Terror; and the Jewish Museum of Berlin. The Memorial to the Sinti and Roma Victims of National Socialism, near the Reichstag, also honors those murdered simply for being who they were. All provide extensive commentary on this terrible era. Plaques in the Jewish Quarter and the Neue Synagogue provide additional information about the era.

The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe

Topography of Terror

Jewish Museum of Berlin

The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, also known as the Holocaust Memorial, was designed by architect Peter Eisenman and engineer Buro Happold. Its 200,000 square-foot site is covered with 2,711 concrete slabs, arranged in a grid pattern on a sloping field. Organized in rows, 54 go north–south and 87 go east–west at right angles but set slightly askew. Construction began in April 2003 and was finished in late 2004. It was inaugurated on May 10, 2005, sixty years after the end of World War II in Europe. It is located one block south of the Brandenburg Gate.

The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe (Reichstag in background)

The Information Centre, located beneath the Memorial, begins with a timeline for the Final Solution from when the Nazis took power in 1933 through the murder of 500,000 Soviet Jews in 1941. The rest of the exhibition is divided into four rooms dedicated to personal aspects of the tragedy: individual families or letters thrown from the trains that transported them to the death camps. The Room of Families focuses on the fates of 15 specific Jewish families. In the Room of Names, names of all known Jewish Holocaust victims obtained from the Yad Vashem memorial are read out loud. Each chamber contains visual reminders of the stelae above: rectangular benches, horizontal floor markers and vertical illuminations.

Information Centre

The Jewish Museum Berlin is the largest Jewish museum in Europe. It consists of three buildings, two of which are new additions specifically built for the museum by architect Daniel Libeskind. The W. Michael Blumenthal Academy of the Jewish Museum Berlin was built – also after a design by Libeskind – adjacent to the building in 2011 and 2012 in the former flower market hall. The archives, library, museum education department, lecture hall and Diaspora Garden are located here. The museum essentially consists of two buildings – a baroque old building, the “Kollegienhaus” (that formerly housed the Berlin Museum), and a new, deconstructivist-style building by Libeskind. The two buildings have no visible connection above ground. The 161,000 square-foot Libeskind building contains twisted passages and is accessible only via an underground entrance from the old building. Construction on the new extension to the museum began in November 1992. The empty museum was completed in 1999 and attracted more 350,000 people before it was filled and opened in September 2001.

Jewish Museum of Berlin

The Topography of Terror is located on the site of buildings that housed the SS Reich Main Security Office, the headquarters of the Sicherheitspolizei, SD, Einsatzgruppen and Gestapo. The Gestapo and SS headquarters buildings were largely destroyed by Allied bombing during early 1945; the ruins were demolished after the war. The boundary between the American and Soviet zones of occupation ran along Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse; thus the street soon became a fortified boundary. The Berlin Wall ran along the south side of Niederkirchnerstrasse. The wall here was never demolished. The section adjacent to the Topography of Terror is the longest extant segment of the outer wall.

Topology of Terror

The first exhibitions on the site took place in 1987, as part of Berlin's 750th anniversary. The cellar of the Gestapo headquarters, where many political prisoners were tortured and executed, was found and excavated. The site was then turned into an open-air memorial and museum, protected from the elements by a canopy, detailing the history of Nazi repression. A joint exhibition was shown both at the site and in East Germany in 1989. In 1993, three years after German reunification, a foundation established to take care of the site chose architect Peter Zumthor to design a permanent museum. However, construction was stopped due to funding problems after the concrete core of the structure had been built, which stood on the site for nearly a decade until it was demolished in 2004 and a new building begun. Construction of the new Documentation Center by architect Ursula Wilms and landscape architect Heinz W. Hallmann was finished in 2010.

Topology of Terror

Paris, mainly thanks to German Gen. Dietrich von Cholititz, who defied Hitler’s directive to totally destroy the city in August 1944 before the Allies retook Paris (leading to the famous question, “Is Paris burning?”), still looks like one huge movie set. Beneath it lies the ugly history of Nazi occupation, aided in large part by collaborators and the Vichy State in southern France. I found thoughts about the former Nazi headquarters I photographed, as well as historic photographs of SS officers lounging on the Champs-Élysées and the Nazi flag flying atop the Eiffel Tower, to be as unnerving as any I would have in Berlin.

Paris (from Centre Pompidou observation deck)

While reading Madame Foucade’s Secret War, the biography of the woman who led France’s largest spy ring during World War II, I jotted down address of Paris buildings that housed Nazi operation to photograph during our trip. Three of them our now luxury hotels; another is a government building. The most notorious of all – 84 Avenue Foch, the headquarters for SD, SS counterintelligence – where prisoners were tortured and murdered was a bit too far out of our way.


The Peninsula Paris, opened in 1908 as the Hotel Majestic, served as the headquarters of the German military high command in France during the German occupation from October 1940 to July 1944. Formerly the site of the palace of Queen Isabella II of Spain, hotelier Leonard Tauber constructed the Hotel Majestic, retaining Queen Isabella's bathroom accoutrements, including her marble bath, in the Presidential suite. Designed by Armand Sibien, construction began in 1906 and was completed in 1908. The hotel was purchased for use as a military hospital at the outbreak of World War I and served in this capacity for five months. It was damaged during its hospital service and was not renovated and reopened until 1916. It was purchased by the French government in 1936 to serve as offices for the Ministry of Defence . After the war, The Majestic served as the first headquarters of UNESCO until 1958, when it was converted into a conference center for The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, founded at the hotel in 1960. It was also the location for the signing of the Paris Peace Accords on January 27, 1973, ending American involvement in the Vietnam War. The French government sold the building in 2008 to Qatari Diar for $460 million. It reopened on August 1, 2014. The hotel offers 200 luxury rooms, including 34 suites, ranging from $750 to more than $1,000 a night.

Peninsula Paris

Le Scribe, down the street from the Opéra Garnier, was constructed by Baron Haussmann in 1861. During World War II, the hotel served as the German communications center. After the liberation of Paris, the Allied forces established its press center here. Now the Sofitel Le Scribe Paris Opéra, it was the home of the original Jockey Club.

Sofitel Le Scribe Paris Opéra

11 Rue des Saussaies was Gestapo headquarters for occupied Paris during World War II. After the war, the building housed the Ministry of the Interior, including the Sûreté nationale.

11 Rue des Sassaies

I did not have the correct address for the Hotel Meurice on the Rue de Rivoli but found it as part of a wide-angle photograph. The hotel opened in 1815. Between September 1940 and August 1944, the hotel was requisitioned by the German occupation authorities. In August 1944, the Meurice became the headquarters of General Dietrich von Choltitz, the military governor of Paris. As noted earlier, von Choltitz famously disobeyed Hitler's commands to level the city of Paris. Hitler's reported screamed to von Choltitz over a Hotel Meurice telephone, "Is Paris burning?" Rooms now go for more than $1,000 a night.

Hotel Meurice (domed building to the left)

Another building with World War II significance is the Hotel Saint-Florentin, completed in 1769. The hotel was acquired by James de Rothschild in 1838; it was renovated during the 1860s. The family rented it to the United States Government in 1948, where it was used to administer the Marshall Plan and later the George Marshall Center. The United States purchased the building in 1950; now most of the building is leased to the Jones Day law firm. The Marshall Center remains as part of the Hotel de Tallyrand.

Hotel Saint-Florentin

This is not to say there are no acknowledgements of the Nazi occupation in Paris. Two sites in particular memorize those lost in the Holocaust.

The Memorial to the Martyrs of the Deportation honors the 200,000 people who were sent from Vichy France to Nazi concentration and death camps. Located on the site of a former morgue, it was designed by architect Georges-Henri Pingusson and inaugurated in 1962. The memorial is shaped like a ship's prow; the crypt is accessible by two staircases and a lowered square. The crypt leads to a hexagonal rotunda that includes two chapels containing earth and bones from concentration camps. The memorial's narrow entrance is marked by two concrete blocks. Along both walls of the narrow, dimly lit chamber, 200,000 glass crystals with light shining through symbolize each deportees who died in the camps; a single bright light is located at the end of the tunnel. Urns with ashes from the camps are positioned at both lateral ends. The chamber’s ends have small rooms that seem to depict prison cells. An iron gate opposite the entrance overlooks the Seine at the tip of the Île de la Cité. A circular plaque on the floor of the underground chamber reads: "They descended into the mouth of the earth and they did not return." A "flame of eternal hope" burns and The Tomb of the Unknown Deportee bears the inscription: "Dedicated to the living memory of the 200,000 French deportees sleeping in the night and the fog, exterminated in the Nazi concentration camps."

Memorial to the Martyrs of the Deportation

Because of time constraints, we were only able to pass The Memorial of the Shoah, which opened near the Jewish Quarter in 2005. The forecourt of the memorial includes a circular memorial listing the names of the death camps and the Warsaw Ghetto. There is also a wall with seven bas-reliefs by Arbit Blatas that symbolize the camps and the persecution of the Jews. Several walls that make a passageway to the building list the names of the approximately 76,000 French Jews who were deported and murdered by the Nazis. The crypt predates the Memorial of the Shoah; in 1957, the ashes of victims from the different death camps and the Warsaw Ghetto were buried in dirt from Israel. The crypt also includes a door from the Warsaw Ghetto and the "Jewish Files" created by the Vichy government to identify Jewish citizens. These files were later used by the Nazis to locate Jews for deportation. Some 3,300 persons awarded the title "Righteous Among the Nations" to non-Jewish people who helped save Jews during the war have their names listed on the wall that runs alongside of the memorial.

Museum of the Shoah

Finally, plaques in the Jewish Quarter in the Marais District commemorate those deported from Paris as part of the Final Solution. And as a reminder that anti-Semitism never disappears, the bombing and shooting attack at Chez Jo Goldenberg restaurant on August 9, 1982, was carried out by the Abu Nidal Organization, a group that splintered from Fatah. Two assailants threw a grenade into the dining room, then rushed in and fired machine guns. Six people, including two Americans, were killed and 22 were injured. The restaurant closed in 2006 and former owner Jo Goldenberg died in 2014.

Former Chez Jo Goldenberg

70?!

Like the first time I saw the number “2” as the first digit on our digital scale a few years back, the prospect of the first digit in my age being “7” seems equally improbable. I had planned to write a long treatise on the meaning of reaching 70 until realizing it would be just so much self-indulgence. I will therefore keep it to one subject: health.

Birth announcement (our father was a CPA)

An early death in the family (https://brulelaker.blogspot.com/2010/12/sudden-death-in-family.html) affects one’s outlook on his or her own mortality. As noted in the blog post link, my father died suddenly of a heart attack at age 55, some nine weeks after my wedding. His father died at age 57 after a short illness, also of heart disease. For years (decades really), my life was shadowed by the prospect of an early and sudden death. Some of my actions might have reflected this feeling, although it’s a stretch to say I adopted Mickey Mantle’s lament, “If I knew I was going to live this long I would’ve taken better care of myself.”

Our generation, especially as we headed toward senior citizenry, is the first to take personal health and fitness seriously. Today I’m in as good condition as ever – notwithstanding the 6-mile runs taken 30 years ago – tipping the scale at around 180. Although I have been playing full short-court 4-on-4 basketball two or three days a week during the last 21 years, I didn’t find the key to losing weight and maximizing fitness until two years ago.

We won four free session from personal trainer Rick Wemple at a silent auction for the TimeLine Theatre Company. I’d worked out in our building’s Fitness Center off and on over the years but hadn’t been up there in some time. I liked the discipline of the workouts with Rick, a former college track coach, and signed up for ten more; I’ve kept renewing ever since. To make it really effective, I work out another two days and combine that with a daily stretching routine. Rick attributed the weight loss to using several more muscle groups, not simply aerobic activities.

The stretching came out of necessity. Last August, I woke up early one morning and could barely get out of bed. I’d been suffering lower back pains during the previous days (an x-ray and CT scan the day before had shown some disc degeneration) that turned out so debilitating I took an ambulance to the Northwestern Memorial emergency room. The doctors found nothing new and released me with a scrip for physical therapy at Athletico on E. Chicago Avenue.

Even though I have come back from an angioplasty, partial nephrectomy and arthroscopic knee surgery, this time scared me. I know at least three guys younger than me who no longer play basketball because of back problems. The very next day I met with physical therapist Dr. Sally Ryan to begin three-day/week one-hour sessions. Sally asked about my goals; I responded that of course being pain-free I wanted to get back on the basketball court and resume personal training. Eleven weeks later, I was playing basketball and lifting weights again. I told Sally at least twice that she had given me back a large part of my life.

Perhaps paradoxically, I’m less concerned with my own mortality now that I was fifteen years ago. In addition to my fitness activities, I roam around the city taking photographs, which makes me quite happy to be “retired” (being self-employed since 2000 makes it hard to mark a retirement date). Janet does her best to keep after me about eating, and we are more careful about that as the year pass. We’re traveling while we still can go from morning until night, visiting Athens, Jerusalem, Istanbul, Swiss Alps, Italian Lakes country, Florence, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Madrid, Rome, Venice and Paris, among other places, since 2013. Paris and Berlin are on tap in September. Next fall it will be someplace new.

Rather than waxing philosophical, I’ll state the obvious: being 70 is much better than the alternative. I’ve lived in 8 decades; an even 10 would be nice.

Farewell, Durgin-Park

The announcement that Durgin-Park, a restaurant in Boston’s Faneuil Hall Marketplace, would close on January 12 came as no surprise, despite its more than 190 years of existence. For many years, the food had not been the attraction in the venerable institution, known for its long tables and sometimes surly waitstaff. The closing did prompt some notable life flashbacks, beginning at age 12, with accompanying sadness.

Our first family trip to Boston in 1961 followed both a summer at camp and a stop for a first-time visit to New York City. Among the things I remember from the trip were my first game at Fenway Park and dinners at Locke-Ober (a fancy restaurant that operated from 1875 to 2012) and Durgin-Park. I’m not sure what I ate other than sampling somebody’s Indian pudding but was impressed by the setting not seen back home. 

Durgin-Park (Eric Hurwitz photo)

Durgin-Park became a popular spot for family and pregame dining after I transferred to Boston University in September 1968. My parents paid a visit that fall and took my brother Frank (up from Wesleyan), Richard Friedman (Harvard), Jim Finder and Jim Wolfson (MIT) and me to dinner. My father, a brilliant CPA and company CFO, didn’t realize the restaurant was cash-only and had to borrow from us students to pay the bill. I don’t know if I’d ever seen him so embarrassed. Before a Celtics game on November 22, Frank and I ran into Barbara Fulton, who we’d known since age 6, and her family there. She was very excited that the Beatles White Album had come out that day; it was news to us.

Frank and I during our parents' Boston visit, 1968

During the 1968 – 1969 NBA season, I attended several Celtics games and, with the restaurant a short walk from the Boston Garden, Durgin-Park became a frequent dining spot. A frugal evening consisted of taking the train from Kenmore Square to the Haymarket station (25 cents each way), a plate of fried oysters (99 cents) and water (free) and a ticket in the Garden’s balcony (probably $2.50). I didn’t attend another Celtics game after that season, in which the Celtics won its 11^th NBA championship in 13 seasons after finishing fourth in the Eastern Conference behind the Bullets, 76ers and Knicks. My last game was the sixth and final game of the Eastern Conference finals, when a last-minute improbable bank shot from behind the free-throw line by Satch Sanders put the game out of reach.

Another 20+ years would elapse before my next dinner at Durgin-Park, this time with Janet and Marisa. The evening was a disappointment for all. Perhaps I’d built up the experience too much, for all of us found the food mediocre at best. At about the same time, Frank and family made a similar trip to Boston, at which our mother joined them. She too reported that the dinner was less than notable. Frank ordered Indian pudding, which my mother gave a succinct one-word description of the dish based on color and consistency. He didn’t like it either.

Boston Garden during our 1992 visit

My final visit on March 22, 2007, would later produce some bizarre results. I’d flown into Boston that morning to see the evening’s Canadiens - Bruins game for what was expected to be the 34^th and last season in the Bruins front office for my friend Nate Greenberg. With time to kill between lunch and the game, I wandered over to the Quincy Market. Spotting Durgin-Park, I climbed the steps to take a look . . . but not to dine, for dinner would be in the Garden’s dining room before the game. My first glimpse was a completely empty room, which was probably used during busy periods and/or parties. The main dining room was sparsely filled, even for the early hour. The whole scene looked rather depressing; a waitress walking by with a plate of frankfurters and baked beans, both of which looked like they’d been heated up in respective pots, only contributed to my sadness.

TD Garden March 22, 2007

After arriving home, I wrote a review, stating up front that I did not dine that evening but had a long history there, in a food blog (possibly Road Food). The subsequent comments fell just short of death threats; evidently Durgin-Park had devotees who would brook no criticism of the establishment. One person went far enough to find out I live in Chicago, then stated that because the property owner, General Growth Properties, was headquartered here that I was probably paid by GGP for the bad review in order to help them get Durgin-Park to leave. Finally, I complained to the blog owners, who blocked further comments and deleted all the others.

Durgin-Park (Katie Chudy photo)

My criticisms aside, it’s sad to see an institution – in this case a rather unique one – pass into history. The tourists will no longer climb the stairs to sample the Yankee pot roast, prime rib or Indian pudding. A plate of fried oysters was $14.95, twice the rate of inflation. Maybe I would have ordered them again anyway; some memories are priceless.

September 8, 1923

On the occasion of what would be her 95^th birthday, it’s time to write about my mother, a woman I’ve described as “lighting up a room, in more ways than one.”

Model photograph, 1973

Harriet Bloomfeld was born in Chicago on September 8, 1923. She told us her families were from Austria and Russia, without any details of where exactly they had lived. Until recently, I had the image of the Bloomfelds as cultured Viennese, while the Saches were probably from Kiev. Abraham and Sarah Bloomfeld in fact were from Bursztyn, a shtetl in Galicia, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire when they immigrated to the U.S. in the late 1800s. Their town later became part of Poland and now Ukraine. Several members of Abraham’s family – his sisters had the surname Winz – were murdered in the Holocaust. I got my name and height from another great-grandfather, Fred Sachs. At 6’4”, he was almost as tall sitting down as his wife Fannie (about 5’0”) was standing up.

Fred and Fannie Sachs

Her parents were Meyer and Evelyn, who everybody called “Cookie” because of her round face. Meyer went straight from Marshall High School on the West Side to Kent College of Law, interrupting his studies to serve in the U.S. Navy during World War I. After graduating at age 21, he flunked the bar exam at least twice and worked as a salesman until the day he died at age 86.

Meyer Bloomfeld, law school yearbook 1918

Cookie, one of eight children, grew up on Robey Street (now Damen Avenue) on the site of the present Illinois Medical District. She graduated from McKinley High School (now Chicago Bulls College Prep) but did not attend college. Meyer and Cookie married on February 19, 1922. They would be married for 64 years.

Evelyn "Cookie" Sachs, 1910s

My mother, the first child, was born September 8, 1923, in Chicago Lying-In Hospital. Somebody in the Sachs had a beef with Michael Reese Hospital, where most Jewish children were born at the time, so both my mother and her brother Alan were born at other institutions. Unless I missed it, mom never told me she originally lived on the North Side. Her birth certificate lists the family residence as “4036 Magnolia”; however, there is no 4000 block of N. Magnolia Avenue. I later found the true address was 4836 N. Magnolia, almost around the corner from the Aragon Ballroom. They subsequently moved to the 5400 block of S. University Avenue in Hyde Park, most likely before her brother Alan was born in 1930. The building was razed for the Lutheran theological seminary.

Mom, 1920s

Mom wasn’t big on providing details about her early life. I don’t know if she attended school in Hyde Park (either Ray or Kozminski Elementary) before moving to 6902 S. Clyde Avenue in South Shore. The raised first-floor apartment is across the street from the O’Keeffe Elementary School playground. She graduated from O’Keefe in 1937. My brother and I would attend the school 18 years later.

It was on to Hyde Park High School, where she met two life-long friends, Margie Wallace and Joy Hersh. A girl came up behind my mother in freshman gym class, togged on her gym suit and asked, “Are you Jewish?” It was Margie. Mom gift-wrapped the suit and gave it to Margie on the occasion of her 70^th birthday at Chasen’s in Los Angeles. After Margie died last year, her younger son, Dr. Robert Wallace, returned the gym suit to me. 

Hyde Park High School gym suit, 1930s

Joy Hersh and her husband Henry also moved to Los Angeles in the early 1960s to avoid Chicago’s winters. She was a very successful Realtor, once selling a house in Pacific Palisades to one of my second cousins, then selling it again after she divorced her husband and moved back to New York City. My parents were visiting the Hershes on their first trip to California, enjoying the beautiful weather in the backyard of their Brentwood home on August 5, 1962, when they heard several police and ambulance sirens. The next day they found that Marilyn Monroe had been found dead three short blocks away. Joy is still hale and hardy. She provided a few details about mom’s life during our last phone conversation.

Grandpa Meyer attended South Side Hebrew Congregation, a Conservative temple, but I doubt mom spent much, if any, time there. She went to religious school at KAM and then Chicago Sinai Congregation . . . wherever her friends were going. They would take the bus to the shul on S. Parkway (now King Drive) and have one person pay the fare, then go to the back and open the door for the others. Her confirmation-class photograph hangs on the third floor of the temple, now one-half block from our residence. 

Former Chicago Sinai Congregation

Graduating from Hyde Park High School in June 1941, mom made the long commute from South Shore to DePaul University for one semester. After informing the instructors she was taking off for Yom Kippur, they said they didn’t realize she was Jewish. Dropping out after the United States entered World War II, the war years remained fuzzy to this day. Joy told me they both volunteered for some type of social-service supporting the war effort, for which my grandfather drove them downtown. According to Joy, mom also worked as a clerk in one or more of the Loop department stores.

Mom, early 1940s

On March 22, 1946 (ironically, three years to the day Frank and I were born), mom was fixed up with a 29-year-old CPA home after serving as an MP in the U.S. Army in western Illinois. Evidently, things moved quickly – perhaps in part because both were still living in apartments with parents and a brother – and they married on September 3, 1946. The independent type she would always be, mom refused to wear a bridal gown; dad wore a snappy double-breasted pinstripe suit. They paid the customary post-war bribe to get an apartment at 7130 S. Cyril Court.

Just married, Sept. 3, 1946

As noted, Frank and I came three years later (nine minutes apart), an unexpected occurrence until only three weeks before. This being the tax season, they didn’t have time to buy and set up another crib until after April 15, so we shared one for a short time. By then they had moved to 6738 S. Merrill Avenue. Babysitters were readily available; Meyer and Cookie lived three blocks away, and grandma Helen, a widow since 1942, lived one-mile west. Like other wives of dad’s Phi Epsilon Pi friends, mom tagged along to the then-infrequent White Sox night games in the early 1950s. During one game, the man sitting in front of her and Dort Finder (now 98 years old) turned around and said, “I’m sorry ladies, but I don’t care about the price of chickens at the High-Low.”

Frank and Fred, Apr. 1949

It was time to move to the suburbs – Frank and I were too big to share the one bathtub – and a house with a front lawn, attached garage and backyard. Glencoe would be our home for exactly 15 years, moving in 1955 and back to the city in 1970. Mom stayed home and handled the discipline, since dad was virtually gone from January 1 to April 15 every year (until going into private industry in 1963) and traveling to do audits on Pick Hotels, his firm’s major client. In 1961, Frank and I did something egregious enough for her to ban us from watching the first game of the World Series. She went downtown to meet friends that day, leaving us to come home for lunch and turn on the game. Upon arriving home after school, she greeted us with “You watched the World Series, didn’t you?” The big black-and-white box had long since cooled, but I knew she wasn't bluffing. “Yes,” I replied, “how did you know?” “Because the channel selector was on Channel 12 when I left and on Channel 5 when I came home,” she answered. An early lesson in thinking several steps ahead, indeed.

Mom and Dad, early 1960s

I am forever grateful for her insisting on our learning manners and helping around the house. Cooking was encouraged; cleaning was required. We were taught to say, “Yes, sir” and “Yes, ma’am,” to look people in the eye when taking and to write intelligent thank-you notes. One of the greatest compliments I’ve received was from the mother of my college freshman’s roommate, who said “Sign of a good upbringing” after performing some routine task. On the other hand, mom was the arbiter of profanity; dad never swore so it only became permissible if mom said it. She was actually pretty liberal about it.

Mom spent much of her time over the years doing volunteer social service. She was the co-chairman (as they were called back then) of the annual Brandeis University Book Fair in the early 1960s when it was held in a temporary storefront in downtown Winnetka. The Council for Jewish Elderly and JCC were favorite organization for which she contributed time.

Fred, Mom and Frank, mid-1960s

At the risk of TMI, mom had major surgery in summer 1964 that illustrates how much things change. Frank and I were at summer camp, and the director, Nardie Stein, informed us my mother was in the hospital for surgery, and he had arranged with my father to call her. The telephone system in northern Wisconsin was still primitive in those days, so Nardie had to call an operator to place the call. He then handed the phone to me, after which I was told nobody named Harriet Nachman was registered there. Panic-stricken, I said, “Is this Passavant Hospital?” “No, this is the Water Tower Inn” was the reply. What a relief!  BTW, it was a hysterectomy, and dad had to explain what it is to his 15-year-old sons.

We were among the first suburban families to move back into the city, returning while Frank and I were still in college. They purchased a condominium on N. Lake Shore Drive, which cut dad’s commute time to the office. One of their friends needed an attractive, prematurely gray-haired woman to do a three-part commercial for Toni Magic Moment for the 1970 Miss America Pageant. Mom was chosen; it concluded with “I’m a brunette again!”

Advertisement, early 1970s

On March 29, 1973, barely two months after Janet and I married, mom returned home in the late afternoon to find her brother waiting in the lobby. She figured if something had to do with their parents, 76 and 73, he would have called from his Hancock Building office. Alan told her my father had died suddenly at age 55. As noted here, it hit us like a ton of bricks. http://brulelaker.blogspot.com/2010/12/sudden-death-in-family.html Mom was just short of 50 at the time.

Not too long after, mom told me she would like to marry again. Once the shock wore off – who could possibly replace my father? – I realized she couldn’t spend the rest of her life mourning the tragic loss. One year later, after a few “dates” that went nowhere, she met Irving Nathan, who had been divorced for a few years. Irv was the opposite of my father – outgoing, a born salesman and good-time charley – which was a good thing, for he took what were eventually the seven of us (Frank, Martha, Grant, Julia, Janet, Marisa and me) as his own. They traveled the world together, too many places to list, on what mom called “a long date.” Winters were eventually spent first in Phoenix, San Diego and Palm Springs. Old friends remained as they made new friends.

Irv and Mom, mid-1970s

I came to realize mom considered Janet to be more her wonderful daughter and me the pesky son-in-law. Coming from Brooklyn knowing nobody in Chicago, Janet needed large doses of support, especially after the tragedy that virtually kicked off our marriage. Mom did countless things for her and never stopped extolling her virtues to friends and family.

Janet and Mom, 1973

Irv’s health took a turn for the worse in 1996, and he passed away that August. After two marriages, mom figured it was enough and very much enjoyed the single life. Thanks to my uncle Adolph and aunt Ros and, later, her good friend Sonya Reich, mom traveled to Europe twice, as well as taking the entire family on a Mediterranean cruise. She accompanied us to New York City several times, always a fun getaway, and kept busy volunteering for Working in the Schools (WITS) and Jewish Community Centers (JCC).

Mom, Janet, Lady Liberty and me, New York City, July 2008

Mom was planning for her 90^th birthday celebration in September 2013 when her health began deteriorating. We shared an internist, who told me mom practiced “ostrich medicine.” She often said if anything was found, she was too old to treat it. Constant spinal pain got progressively worse, and she suffered a stroke in March. After a few days, the doctors sat us down and, to our surprise, told us scans showed pervasive cancer throughout her upper body and would be discharged into hospice care. The end came rather swiftly – two weeks – and the entire family were with her until right before she passed away. Her death on March 26 was three days before the 40^th anniversary of my father’s death.

Not a particularly religious person – she had resigned her temple membership a few years earlier after 30+ years – mom often said she didn’t wasn’t a rabbi at her funeral. Because it wasn’t in writing, I considered having somebody officiate. Before that, I had found my father’s prayer book from his South Shore Temple confirmation in 1932 that contained a mourner’s service. I took parts of it – retaining its beautiful archaic language – and led the service, calling on those in attendance on the cold but sunny afternoon, to speak as they may. Sonia led off with a very poignant tribute as did several others. 

My father's prayer book, 1932

Mom was not the most patient person, so I opened my remarks with, “I don’t know about you, but I think I heard mom say, ‘C’mon already!’” I said I’d apologized to Joy for mom being short with her in recent months; she’d replied with a laugh, “She was always short with me!” I concluded with one of hers and one of my favorite sayings: “It’s been charming” and “When you see dad, tell him everything turned out all right.” Even after five years, Janet and I still have many “Wait ‘til mom hears this one” moments. This is another one.