that my father’s family would hold on a regular basis. My step-grandmother told me the story. It had an impact, because it remains as a vivid memory in my mind; one of those memories where the expression on my step grandmother’s face etched in my mind as was my mother’s memory on the porch overlooking Humboldt Park.
My father, as was the custom of the time in immigrant Jewish homes, had a fourth grade education—enough to learn the rudiments of reading and writing and ‘rithmetic—and then proceeded to learn a trade—plumbing.
My maternal grandfather also told me that he knew my father’s family in the ‘old country,’ and when my father’s mother died, “I picked up your father and put him on my lap. He was about four or five years old. I wiped his nose and told him you see, Ben, even God can make a mistake.”
This is the background of my grandparents who fled Eastern Europe, came to this country and enjoyed the freedoms they could never have in The Pale. It took many years for them to stop looking over their shoulder. They raised their children and assimilated as United States citizens. They learned English, but spoke Yiddish in the home. They spoke with me in Yiddish, and I would answer in English. I lived with them until I went away to college. They played a major role in whatever I was able to achieve in life.
My mother tells me, after her divorce, “That when I was going to marry your father, grandpa was real happy. I think I married him because your grandfather wanted it. I don’t think I ever loved him.”
But my mother’s illness was more than my grandfather could cope with. He could not comprehend the concept of mental illness. My mother’s depression was bad enough, but her failure to touch anything, apparently out of fear of spreading the “contamination” she picked up in the “sanitarium,” drove him to distraction and resulted in her alienation from much of the family. As I grew up, I must confess I too found it difficult to be able to cope. I couldn’t understand why she only touched objects in the home with paper, would never touch me, and why, if I touched her, I had to wash my hands. She claimed that while in the sanitarium “a flame went out of my body. They took my soul. I have no soul.” This thinking and behavior persisted all her adult life, associated with bouts of depression, but never any more hallucinatory symptoms. In my mother’s late eighties, she slowly lapsed into mild senility and forgetfulness (“you’re my son?”). Her old mental symptoms resolved and finally I was able to hug her and kiss her cheek and hold her hand without her panicking; and I did not have to wash my hands or lips. It felt good.
She died at age 92 while holding my hand, something she would never allow in her younger years. While grasping her hand in mine I fell asleep in the chair. When I awakened, she was gone. I had the thought that she put me to sleep so I would not see her die. My family, the medical profession, nor I, had never been able to help her. Only time and an altered aging brain healed her mind. I am hopeful this meant that God returned her soul before she died, for during life her biggest fear was dying without a soul. “How could you die without a soul?” she would ask.
In spite of it, all she managed to function normally away from home. She worked for famous Chicago lawyers, performed as the Parent Teacher’s Association secretary for many years, typed 100 plus words a minute and played Dark town Stutter’s Ball on the piano. The LaSalle street lawyers she worked for praised her as an unlicensed attorney. And she was able to accomplish this after only two years of high school. “Why only two years?” I asked. “Because most of my friends were standing in the two year line during registration, so that’s where I went.” She led her class academically. Her brother, a physician, marveled at her brilliance. He looked forward to the grammatically perfect letters he received from her during World War II while he served as a physician in the army. She excelled in her own way in spite of the tremendous odds and misunderstanding of the time levied against her. I owe her much. She was an example of what psychologically challenged people could accomplish. No one ever diagnosed her with a label other than depression, but the few hallucinatory bouts as a young woman makes me wonder if she did have a schizoaffective disorder. I didn’t know enough then—and I still don’t—to come to a firm psychiatric diagnosis.
CHAPTER 3
EARLY DAYS
I never felt the great depression of the 1930’s as many American citizens did. We were lucky. My great-uncle, Sam Rosen, who, as mentioned, owned the bakery on Division Street in Chicago and provided steady employment for his sister’s husband (my grandfather), assured my family of a steady and stable income of thirty-five dollars a week. On this income, my grandfather raised his family, a wife, three daughters and one son, in a three bedroom flat on Sacramento Blvd. Much later in life, I learned that Sam Rosen, when a nine-year-old boy in Poland, spent time in Germany as a baker’s apprentice, worked his way up to a full baker, and by 18 years of age emigrated to the United States, first living in New York, where I heard rumors to the extent that he became a Union organizer, had difficulties with “the mob” and fled to Chicago where he earned his fortune becoming a multi-millionaire, especially famous for his “Rosen’s Rye Bread,” which surrounded every corned beef sandwich made in the city of Chicago and the mid-west for decades.
As a young boy in the 1930’s, my memories of the depression were a series of letters, WPA, CCC, plus other letters that referred to Roosevelt’s New Deal, our presidents ambitious effort to lift the country out of the major depression that threatened not only the United States, but also spread its deadly tentacles to the rest of the world playing no small part in events leading to the conditions that had an influence on the development of World War II with all its horrific consequences.
Roosevelt took the bulls by the horn and instituted the New Deal, his effort to give the federal government more responsibility for the economic welfare of the people. States declared a moratorium on bank withdrawals to prevent depositors from withdrawing their funds thus bankrupting the banks, but Roosevelt declared a four-day banking holiday and attested to the fact that the banks were sound, restoring confidence and subsequently insured deposits through the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation FDIC. Roosevelt also established agencies to provide government-sponsored work for the unemployed developing special projects to provide employment for artists, writers, musicians and actors through the Works Project Administration (WPA), initials I was familiar with as one of my friend’s father was an unemployed artist who found employment with the WPA. There was also the Public Works Administration (PWA) employing men aged 18 to 25 through the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) for forest work, construction of highways, dams, buildings and other conservation projects..
During the depression, prices and wages fell. To stem this disaster, Roosevelt developed the National Industrial Recovery Act that promoted the cooperation of labor and management in setting prices, wages and hours worked and gave all employees the right to join unions. Roosevelt also put crop reduction measures in place to reduce farm surpluses, which were responsible for the low prices. Other projects included the Tennessee Valley Authority to develop an underdeveloped area of the country, the Security and Exchange Commission to regulate the stock market and the Social Security Act providing for unemployment insurance and old age pensions.
The country reelected Roosevelt for an unprecedented third term.
I have several memories when I was five years old. The most important one was the decision to become a physician. I attribute this interest to my uncle, my mother’s brother, Sidney, who, in 1935, was a second year medical student at the University of Illinois. By this time, my father and mother had separated, and my mother and I moved in with my grandparents. I can remember my uncle sitting at the dining room table peering through a microscope. He would pick me up and put me on his lap, and point out a world of bacteria, blood cells, and different body tissues. I can remember the fascination I felt, etching in my mind the path as a future doctor. My uncle became the father figure that I never had, and I remain grateful to his memory. My own father finally divorced my mother when I was ten. He would pick me up on Saturdays, and would spend
