The Long Shadows, The Story of Jake Erlich by Andrew Erlich
© 2012 Multicultural Publications an imprint of Erlich Transcultural Consultants
Converted by http://www.eBookIt.com
ISBN: 978-0-9774089-9-3 (Paperback)
ISBN: 978-0-9774089-8-6 (E-book)
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without written permission of the Publisher.
For information regarding permission, write to: Multicultural Publications at [email protected]
Library of Congress Control Number: 2012907519
Printed in the United States of America
Book Designer: Michelle Radomski
Copyeditor: Courtney Wilhelm
Multicultural Publications
Scottsdale, Arizona
This book is dedicated to my Uncle Jake and
my parents, Myer and Ruth Erlich—great story tellers.
It is also dedicated to all those people who
have struggled with being different.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to thank my wife, Robin, my son, Ben, my daughter, Danielle, and my mother, Ruth, for their patience, love, and support over the years as I wrote this novel. I am grateful to Bobby Davidoff, Susan Davidoff, Ray Klein, Michelle Bartlett, Rhoda Goodman, and Diane Barshop for their valuable feedback. I would like to thank my mother-in-law, Edna Pindler, for sharing her memories of early Hollywood.
My coach, Lori DeBoer, was instrumental in introducing me to writing and motivating me to keep at it. This work would not have been possible without the generosity of Jake’s friends and the children and grandchildren of his friends who shared their recollections, stories, photographs, and home movies. In particular, I would like to thank Diana Serra Cary of Northern California; Bob Phillips, Betty Snyder, Fred McDaniel, and Cita Schuster of El Paso; and Marise McDermott, Amy Fulkerson, and Sarita Rodriguez of the Witte Museum in San Antonio. I also appreciate the help I received from Circus World Museum in Baraboo, Wisconsin and the John Ringling Circus Museum in Sarasota, Florida. I am grateful to Dr. Michael Tomor, Christian Gerstheimer, Michelle Villa, Laura Zamarripa and Jeffrey Romney of the El Paso Museum of Art, and photographer Marty Snortum for their efforts to share Jake’s art with the world. I also want to thank Eric Pearson, of the El Paso Community Foundation, and Sally Gilbert and Norma Geller of Impact | Programs of Excellence for their help in telling my uncle’s story. Last but not least, I would like to acknowledge Sean Garrison for his guidance and counsel, Michelle Radomski for her work laying out this book, Ilisa Keith for her efforts to publicize it, Laura Mitre for her formatting and Courtney Wilhelm for her editing.
PROLOGUE
Hotel Dieu Hospital - May, 1952
'Round my Indiana homestead wave the cornfields,
In the distance loom the woodlands clear and cool,
Oftentimes my thoughts revert to scenes of childhood,
Where I first received my lessons - nature's school.
Our polar-opposite voices, mine a brawny baritone and hers a sweet soprano, blended together. The melody filled the old hospital ward with whispered music. The young nurse gently put her hand on my forearm. It felt good. Then we both closed our eyes and continued to harmonize.
But one thing there is missing in the picture,
Without her face it seems so incomplete,
I long to see my mother in the doorway,
As she stood there years ago, her boy to greet.
Oh, the moonlight's fair tonight along the Wabash….
“What’s going on in here?”
We abruptly stopped singing, opened our eyes and looked to the doorway. The angry face of Sister Mary Katherine, the nun in charge of the night shift, peered back at us out of the darkened hallway. Liz sank into a wooden chair next to my bed and clutched her hands tightly in her lap, like a school girl in the principal’s office for the first time. We both knew the old nun was by the book. She was infamous for not putting up with nonsense from patients and for firing young nurses at the drop of a hat. Word around the ward was that she wasn’t always that way. When Sister Mary Katherine was young, just starting her work in hospitals, she was tolerant and kind like Liz. But after the Spanish Flu Epidemic of 1918 and all she had to deal with, they say she hardened. God knows all the struggles I’ve been through have changed me. I wondered what, if anything, about me had not changed.
“Good evening, Sister,” I answered. “Nurse Reardon suggested we sing to cheer me up. It was such a wonderful idea. You see, I have been feeling kind of blue,” I answered.
Liz looked down and didn’t say a word.
“Humph,” the old nun replied, suspiciously looking over the spectacles that were propped on the end of her nose. “Just keep it down. There are sick people in this place.” She shook her head.
“Yes, ma’am, I promise.” As she walked away we could hear her long, black robes brush against the linoleum and the gold chain and crucifix she wore around her neck jangling on the front of her habit. When the nun was safely out of earshot, the young nurse stood up and walked over to the huge bed my parents had loaned Hotel Dieu for me to sleep in because their hospital beds would never have fit me.
“Thank you for bailing me out, Mr. Erlich. I don’t think Sister Mary Katherine would have taken too keenly to the fact that you were trying to cheer me up. If she ever got wind that I told a patient about how homesick I’ve been—if you’ll excuse the expression—there would be hell to pay.”
“It was nothing.” I noticed that my nurse looked troubled; more troubled than I’d ever seen her look before. She had been working the graveyard shift for just a few months. What with my frequent hospitalizations for all the damned transfusions I needed, my awful insomnia, and things being mostly quiet on the ward during the late hours she worked, we had become acquainted. Her name was Elizabeth Reardon. I called her Liz.
That night I wasn’t sure if Liz was bothered by the run-in we’d just had with her boss or if something else was on her mind. She sat down again and leaned forward. Liz wore a starched nurse’s uniform complete with a white apron and cap, bobby pinned to her curly brown hair. The cap had a
