"Bubbie"

“Once you’re gone you can never come back

When you’re out of the blue and into the black”

         Neil Young, “My My, Hey Hey”

Ann “Bubbie” Zucker passed away at age 99.  She was born at the dawn of the modern era, January 1, 1920, in Geisin, Russia. She and her parents, Gertrude and Chaim Stookal, left their native country shortly after the Bolsheviks came to power, then made their way to Chicago.  Ann’s family history reminded me of Gary attorney Paul Glaser, the son of impoverished Jews who came to America after participating in a failed 1905 uprising against Czar Nicholas II.  She and three siblings grew up in the Windy City, and Ann became a secretary after high school.  In 1953 she married Dr. Edward Zucker and served as his office manager. Her obituary stated: “She was a devoted mother to her loving children Victor (Eva), Eric (Haengmi) and Amy (Tim) as well as her four grandchildren Jessica, Andrew, Melissa, and Zoe.”  Former neighbor Mona Stern recalled the time long ago “when we lived next door to Ann and Ed and our kids played together.”

Coming across Ann Zucker’s obit, I found myself wondering how she got the nickname “Bubbie.”  On the same page was an “In Loving Memory” announcement for Christopher “Cricker” Smith of Valparaiso on the fourth anniversary of his death at age 28.  His dad wrote: “You told me that your biggest fear was that people would forget you after you were gone.  We will not let that happen!”  

When my great-aunt Ida Frace Gordon lived with my family, she subscribed to her hometown paper, the Easton Express, for the express purpose of checking the obits for any mention of past friends and acquaintances. My interest is more from a historic perspective, but I get a kick out of coming across colorful nicknames and anecdotes among the solemn words and list of loved ones.  My centennial history of Gary contains a section titled “Ides of March 2003” where I mentioned notices for two St. Timothy’s Church mainstays, Leona Hill and Ophelia Marsh Davis, as well as Lucille “Sweet” Ford-Burnell, a soprano in the Jerusalem Baptist Church choir.  I noted: 

 The write-ups in the Post-Tribune included nicknames (often “papa” or “momma”) and special talents (poet, southern cooking, fisherman) but few clues about the cause of death beyond the ubiquitous “after a brief illness.”  One was left to speculate over the passing of 19-year-old West Side grad Angela Lorraine Windom-Robinson, 27-year-old Wallace grad Rodney L. Pace, Jr., and 30-year-old Wirt grad Terrance “Sean” Ligé.

Timemagazine referred to actress Tessa Thompson as “a queer woman of color”who’d been in tentpole films, an expression unfamiliar to me.  I have since learned that the phrase describes movies (in Thompson’s case, as Valkyrie in Marvel’s “Avenger” series) that have as an ancillary purpose the advertising of toys, games, and other products sold by the franchise.  

In the Post-Tribune an anonymous Quickly submission used the phrase “Crimea River”(i.e., “cry me a river”)about Russian Maria Butina, imprisoned for conspiracy to act as an unregistered foreign agent. In addition to being a song by Justin Timberlake, the expression “cry me a river,”according to Urban Dictionary, is a sarcastic reference to someone who is being a drama queen.  Since many call in Quickly comments, one wonders if the author wanted it printed as “Crimea River” or the Quickly editor was being clever.

 Jim and Marcia Carson

"Marsha" from Pillow Drawings by Larry Kaufman

At bridge I complimented Marcia Carson on her Art in Focus talk about paintings of mothers and children and mentioned one piece that reminded me of drawings by Larry Kaufman, a photo-realist whom Toni studied under at IUN and a close friend during the 1970s.  It turned out that Marcia had taken classes with Kaufman at Bloomington and again while completing a master’s degree at IUN.  Marcia worked on a mural painted on the side of Jenny’s Café next door to where the Fine Arts department was then housed.  One night a dog got into the building and took a leak on a drawing Toni had done of industrial pipes, confirming, Larry quipped, that it was a realistic rendering.

A man bridge buddy Helen Boothe knew well attempted to commit suicide by drinking anti-freeze.  Ugh!   Helen noted that while there had been times when she felt melancholy, she had difficulty understanding depression. Her partner Dottie Hart and I felt the same way.  No matter how down in the dumps, there’s never been a time when I couldn’t think of something to live for.  I told Helen and Dottie that when my dad dropped dead at age 50 from a sudden heart attack, I kept my grief bottled up inside until a few months later, when Toni placed a photo of Vic in a prominent place.  Gradually I began to recall happy memories instead of focusing on regrets, like when I was at the University of Maryland and Vic called from the Baltimore airport, saying that he had a two-hour layover and wondered if I wanted to join him.  I begged off, saying I was busy, and never saw him again. 

Helen brought up that her husband suffered from Alzheimer’s the last 14 years of his life, so I mentioned that Midge’s assisted living facility in California brought patients from the euphemistically named “memory care” ward to Friday afternoon entertainment.  Many mouthed the lyrics of old standards that the piano player was singing.  Helen recollected that she and her husband were at a church service, and he knew the words to the hymns, even the second, less familiar stanzas.  Former Chicago Bears football player Ted Karras flowered after moving to a Memory Care facility.  “He’s even singing again,”wife Anna told me. Helen knew Ted’s sister Helene, whom I interviewed for a Traces article about brother Alex Karras.

Ted Karras honored at Bears game; below Charlie Halberstadt

I partnered with best friend Charlie Halberstadt both at the Chesterton game and one next day at Banta Center in Valpo, which Charlie directs. He guarantees that nobody sits out, so I’d have been paired with someone else had there not been an even number of participants.  In both games we finished above 50% and earned master points. I wish I could have bid or played a couple hands differently, but neither hurt us all that much.

 Viceroy Louis Mountbatten

Rohinton Mistry’s “A Fine Balance” has this acerbic comment on how the 1947 partition of India, which Mahatma Gandhi vociferously opposed, impacted the family fortunes of main character Maneck Kohlah:

   Maneck’s family had once been extremely wealthy.  Fields of grain, orchards of apple and peach, a lucrative contract to supply provisions to cantonments along the frontier – all this was among the inheritance of Farokh Kohlah, and he tended it well, making it increase and multiply for the wife he was to marry and the son who would be born.

   But long before that eagerly awaited birth, there was another, gorier parturition, when two nations incarnated out of one.  A foreigner (Viceroy Louis Mountbatten) drew a magic line on a map and called it the new border; it became a river of blood upon the earth.  And the orchards, fields, factories, businesses, all on the wrong side of that line, vanished with a wave of the pale conjuror’s wand.

Dean Bottorff in Loogootee, Indiana

Former Maple Place neighbor Dean Bottorff posted a photo Jonell took of him and his motorcycle in Loogootee, Indiana.  When I suggested they drop by, he replied:

We thought about visiting you but we were on a somewhat tight schedule with some 3,000 miles to cover in eight days. Our goal in Indiana was Clark County to visit the monument of John Henry Bottorff who was an Ensign in Capt. Michael Wolf's Company of the Berks County Pennsylvania Militia in the Revolutionary War ... the namesake of all Bottorffs after having changed his name from Johannes Heinrich Batdorf ... perhaps because of anti-German sentiment during the Revolution. Clark County was heavily populated with Bottorffs who were among the first settlers there in the very early 1800s.  Rich Bottorff is now very fond of this quote [from Baird’s history of Clark County]: “It is seldom indeed that a Bottorff is found who is not well-to-do and the name has become synonymous with thrift and industry. Originating in Germany representatives of this family became identified with Indiana at an early day.”

Granddaughter Becca asked for advice for a school project on the subject of how the Cold War affected American popular music during the 1980s.  I suggested analyzing Jackson Browne’s 1986 album “Lives in the Balance,” which during a time when the Ronald Reagan administration was aiding murderous Contra counter-revolutionaries in Nicaragua against the socialist Sandinistas warned against the country “drifting toward war” in order to defend business interests.  One line charged that the government was using Cold war rhetoric to justify supporting groups that kill their own people and employing propaganda to sell the American people wars the same way as advertisers sell us clothes and cars. Fortunately, memories of the Vietnam fiasco were still vivid, putting a damper on Reagan’s options.  At a time when National Security Council director for political-military affairs Oliver North and other rightwing operatives were breaking the law to secretly provide weapons to the Contras, Jackson Browne concluded “Lives in the Balance” with these words:

I want to know who the men in the shadows are

I want to hear somebody asking them why

They can be counted on to tell us who our enemies are

But they're never the ones to fight or to die

And there are lives in the balance

There are people under fire

There are children at the cannons

And there is blood on the wire