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  The new African American family on our block must have been plenty jittery themselves. Although we saw no violence toward them, only four years earlier, thousands of whites, throwing bricks and shouting racial epithets, had converged on the first house sold to blacks in West Garfield Park.

  This Saturday night, with our windows open to let in a breeze, we heard the new kids in their backyard, shooting off popguns at ten thirty. “Why are those kids making all that noise so late at night?” Mom griped, pacing the dining room, poking her head out the back door, unable to concentrate on her bills and financial work. Sure enough, the newcomers were “causing problems.”

  Mom decided she’d give the neighbors a hint. She let out our two spotted mutts, Buttons and Bows. Bounding into the backyard, the dogs barked at the unusual commotion. Paul yelled across the fences, “Stop annoying the dogs!”

  “We ain’t botherin’ your dogs,” a young voice called back.

  “Well, it’s too late to be making noise. Why don’t you go inside?”

  The laughter and shouts ceased; the popguns went quiet. A door banged shut. “They went right in,” Paul said, holding open the screen door. The dogs leaped into the house in tail-wagging unison.

  “They went right in?” Mom asked in disbelief, looking up from the checkbook she was struggling to balance.

  “Yeah. I told them that it was too late for noise, and they … they just stopped and went inside.”

  “Oh,” said Mom, looking around, as if searching for an answer to this puzzling outcome. “That’s a surprise.”

  “A good sign, too,” said Dad, “that they care what their neighbors think.”

  But local whites stayed on high alert. Our neighbor to the east talked to Mom over the fence about moving. “The colored keep ringing my bell—to see if I’m selling, I suppose,” she said, petting her pop-eyed Chihuahua. “I’d just as soon get out before it’s too late.”

  “We’re trying to decide what to do, too,” said Mom, mopping the sweat trickling down her cheek that hot June day.

  Except for a black girl in my class at my local grade school, I didn’t know any African Americans—nor did my parents. Prior to the civil rights movement, which had been steadily gaining steam during the spring of 1963, blacks had been virtually invisible in our segregated lives. We saw no blacks on television (except for Amos ’n’ Andy, which was later decried for its stereotypical portrayal of African Americans). I saw no blacks in magazine or newspaper ads, and no blacks on billboards, unless we drove through a black neighborhood—where I felt as if we’d entered a foreign country.

  My childish understanding had been that blacks had their neighborhoods and we had ours, as if it were simply the natural order of the world.

  But now a black family lived just two doors away. That “order” was shattered.

  CHAPTER 2: Nothing from Nothing Is Nothing

  Josef and Lisi Gartz, Dad’s parents, wed in Chicago, October 13, 1911.

  West Garfield Park lies five miles due west of downtown Chicago. In 1912, Dad’s immigrant father, Josef, had landed his first decent-paying job in this community, at the lunch counter of Joe Nelson’s Saloon, serving up free sandwiches with every five-cent schooner of beer. Dad spoke with naked admiration for his parents and their bold decision to strike out from their tiny towns in Transylvania for a country more than five thousand miles distant. Whenever my brothers or I asked Grandpa Gartz why he’d come to America, he answered with the same cryptic remark: “Nothing from nothing is nothing.”

  Grandpa had seen his widowed mother barely eke out a living, standing in a snow-fed river, beating clothes clean on rocks. He had to leave school after the fourth grade and was eventually apprenticed to become a master carpenter. By age fifteen, he’d seen enough of struggle and poverty. He started saving money for his exodus to the “promised land.” Six years later, on Christmas Eve 1910, he boarded a train heading to the Port of Bremen, where he’d catch a ship to America. But he’d been too impatient to wait for the required visa.

  At a border stop thirty-five miles outside Vienna, a guard shook Grandpa awake and asked for his papers. A daring scheme entered my grandfather’s brain. “One moment, please,” he said. “I’ll fetch them from my luggage.” Instead, he exited the train and climbed the outside ladder to the top of the car, where he lay flat, buffeted for two hours by bitter December winds before the train chugged into Vienna. “I thought I would fly away like a piece of paper,” he later wrote to his sweetheart, Lisi Ebner, my future grandmother.

  After more close calls with border guards, he arrived in the Port of Bremen, where, on December 31, 1910, he climbed aboard the steamship Friedrich der Grosse. I imagine his churning gut and thumping heart, his high elation and jangly hopes, as he made his way to the ship’s deck. At age twenty-one, he was embarking on the boldest adventure of his life. From the deck, he gazed down at throngs crowding the dock far below, waving handkerchiefs, bidding farewell to those departing. “They know this is a journey of life and death,” he wrote in his diary. “They may never see us again.”

  On January 11, 1911, his ship docked at New York’s Ellis Island. From there he traveled first to Cleveland, Ohio, eventually making his way to Chicago, where he channeled his formidable determination to persuade Lisi Ebner to join him. They had fallen in love before he’d left. She was a like-minded striver with intelligent, dark eyes and a powerful aspect, her black hair parted down the middle and drawn straight back. In photos from this era, she stands erect and proud, her confident gaze looking to the distance, like a military commander, fully in charge. He had written to her throughout his journey, but he pulled out all the stops in a May 1911 letter:

  Dearest Love, Precious Sweetheart, Darling Lisi, If you love me, I hope that you also will come here… . I would greet you with greatest joy and thankfulness, and take you in my arms… . If you don’t want to come, then I also know that you don’t love me. Because if you loved me, you wouldn’t do anything other than come here.

  How could she resist? Lisi left behind her beloved employer of five years and a large, devoted family, arrived in Chicago on October 11, 1911, and married my grandfather two days later. They eventually had three sons: Will, born in 1913; my dad, Fred, in 1914; and Frank, in 1924.

  At the time of Dad’s birth, in 1914, West Garfield Park was a neighborhood of wooden sidewalks, dirt streets, and butterflies fluttering above open prairies. Just down the street from Joe Nelson’s Saloon, near Crawford (now Pulaski) and Madison, Dad admired the Herculean biceps of the local blacksmith as he wielded red-hot horseshoes, beating them with rhythmic clangs. During the 1920s and ’30s, hotels, ballrooms, theaters, and the impressive Midwest Athletic Club rose up, increasing the neighborhood’s stature and prestige.2 An L train at Lake Street and Crawford whisked workers to downtown offices. My grandparents’ work added to the community’s increasing appeal. Shortly after Dad was born, Grandpa began his lifelong career in the janitorial business, at one of the many buildings he and Grandma would care for—pristine, thanks to their flawless upkeep.

  Like most new immigrants, Dad’s parents put in long hours and saved money, but even in that world, their frugality was obsessive, their work ethic preternatural. Grandpa liked to brag, “When I was young, nobody could work me tired!” Often putting in sixteen-to twenty-hour days, he and Grandma Gartz spent virtually nothing. Their sons wore hand-me-downs from tenants or clothes Grandma made. With his carpentry skills, Grandpa could repair anything, including cast-off furniture he found for their home. They grew vegetables in the summer, canned in the fall, and raised pigeons and rabbits on the back porch for meat. They figured out how to invest in the stock market, then lost $20,000 of savings in the 1929 crash.3 During the Depression, they started over, saving three-quarters of Grandpa’s janitorial salary, eventually buying West Side properties and becoming landlords.

  My grandparents’ make-do, disciplined lifestyle left an indelible impression on Dad, shaping the future he would one day envision
with my mother.

  CHAPTER 3: If We Won’t Be Happy, Who Will?

  Dad and Mom on an early date, fall 1941.

  I knew Mom had fallen for Dad early on in their relationship, but I had never known her rarefied emotions, her idealized vision of their future together, until I found her personal diary. Reading her ecstatic entries drew me into her young heart—and the thrill of falling in love.

  Mom headed to downtown Chicago on Saturday, May 10, 1941, for a night of dancing at Moose Hall, a castle-like edifice with turrets and thick stone walls at Dearborn and Ontario. In the 1940s, young people flocked to events like this, hoping to meet a partner for the evening—or for life. I can see Mom striding into the brightly lit hall with her signature bouncy step, wearing a fashionable, fitted dress that showed off her fine legs, slim waist, and curvy hips. She surely shone like a beacon: high cheekbones slanting up to lively turquoise eyes; dark, shoulder-length curls framing a creamy-skinned face; red lips so full, they might have seemed pouty if she hadn’t radiated so much cheer.

  She scanned the room … Could it be? Fred Gartz! Her heart leaped. She had met him the previous November at another dance. What a grand time they’d had! So why hadn’t he ever phoned her for a date? But now—a second chance! He was as good-looking as ever: dark hair, a wave on his crown catching light, taller than she, just enough that she could imagine her head resting on his shoulder. Mom walked right over and greeted him with a megawatt smile.

  “Hi, Freddy.”

  “Lil! Hello. Won’t you join us?” He stood up, pulled out a chair, and introduced her to his two brothers and their friends. Within minutes, Mom and Dad were so lost in each other, the dance hall and everyone in it disappeared. Half an hour passed before they heard the music call.

  He extended his hand. “Shall we dance?”

  “Do you know how to rumba?” she asked, with flirty eyes and smile.

  “No, but I’m sure you can teach me.”

  By the end of the evening, Mom knew she’d found her man. She wrote:

  There’s no doubt about it; I’m in love with him. He’s really the first man I’ve met that I think I’d like to marry—intelligent, crazy, fun, and we have no end of things to talk about.

  Less than two weeks later, Mom wrote:

  Tuesday, May 20, 1941, 11:00 p.m.

  Quite a thrill awaited me when I came home tonite. Fred sent me a card from Turkey Run [a state park in Indiana] reading, “Have substituted hiking and horsing for the rumba for the time being. This place is grand. Now, auf wiedersehen.” I felt so elated and happy. I must be in love with the guy & I haven’t even gone out with him. I now have a glimmer of hope he’ll phone.

  For whatever unexplained reason (insecurity? fear of rejection?), Dad waited until August 14 to call Mom for a date, set for the next evening. She wrote, “Finally—I heard from Fred Gartz… . I hope and pray this will lead to more and frequent dates!”

  They started with a German movie, then a stroll through nearby Lincoln Park Zoo. Caressed by the warm summer breeze, they walked arm in arm, laughing and exchanging stories. After a couple mugs of frosty beer at nearby Sieben’s Brewery, they returned to the park. When she got home, Mom surely tore open her diary:

  I think we both knew why we went back [to the park]. We sat on a bench hearing the lions roar and quacking of a duck. Oh, it was heavenly! He knows all the little innuendoes of kissing, and I ain’t so bad m’self, if I do say so. We kissed for about an hour and a half. Tonight was like a page from a storybook, and he definitely is the man I want to marry. Dear God, please let it come true!!

  Mom’s words opened a door into her twenty-three-year-old heart, and I peered in, watching my parents’ blossoming love unfold and expand like a pop-up card. I was eager for more, knowing how lucky I was to meet them as they once were.

  The rest of their summer and fall swirled by, Mom recording each date with certainties of her love. They swam at North Avenue Beach, sang German and popular songs to Mom’s backup on the piano, crunched through gold and red autumn leaves during a walk or a horseback ride in local forest preserves. At the end of a Lake Michigan pier, they grasped each other’s hands, extended their arms, and spun in circles as the wind tangled Mom’s hair and waves crashed against the pilings. Dad shouted above nature’s din, “It’s great to be alive!” and Mom said she couldn’t agree more.

  1941–42

  December 7, 1941: The Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, plunging America into World War II. But Mom had love, not war, on her mind that holiday season. On New Year’s Day, she and Dad went to a then-famous Chicago restaurant, Math Igler’s, nicknamed Home of the Singing Waiters. The male servers dressed in lederhosen, suspenders, and green felt hats, each with a jaunty feather spearing from the band; the women wore dirndls, Bavarian folk dresses. After belting out old favorites to the accompaniment of a German band, they returned to waiting tables while music played.

  In between bites of food, Mom and Dad danced the night away. As the evening drew to a close, an elderly couple approached them. “Excuse me,” the woman said, smiling at my parents. “We always watch the young couples when we go out and pick one that we’d like to be if we were young again. Tonight, we wish we could be the two of you.”

  Mom told us kids this story often over the years. I always loved hearing it, loved seeing Mom’s eyes sparkle, the sweet pride playing across her smile as she shared how their joy radiated, like a star shooting light to all within its orbit.

  In the spring of 1942, Dad was hired as a blasting powder blender at the Kingsbury Ordnance Plant, a production factory for war munitions in LaPorte, Indiana. Crafting powders for bullets and bombs was dangerous work, but the job nearly doubled his salary, and he could still date Mom by driving back to Chicago most weekends.

  Two months after he started, his personal world blew up. He often spoke about this watershed trial in his life. But when I came upon the letter he’d written to his parents at the time, Dad’s own words sharpened his ordeal into focus and drew me into his anguish.

  He was testing and mixing some concoction when his boss summoned him. “I have a very painful duty to do, Gartz, but I’ll have to let you go.”

  “What? Why?” Dad was blindsided.

  “I don’t know. Talk to Personnel.”

  In Personnel, Dad was shuffled from one man to another, each claiming to know nothing, lying, or making sly comments like, “You know why.” Caught in a Kafkaesque nightmare of subterfuge and deceit, he couldn’t eat or sleep. “I’m staying here to stand up for the family honor,” he wrote his mother.

  Non-confrontational by nature, and after a lifetime of skirting conflict with his overbearing mother, Dad had mustered all his courage to stand up to power. After more than a week of runarounds, he finally scored a meeting with the personnel director. For more than an hour, the man interrogated Dad, demanding a complete family history, questioning Dad’s loyalty to America, and threatening the entire Gartz family with an FBI investigation. He then moved on to more pointed questions.

  “Why do you cross your sevens? And why do you write the letter F like a German?” The veil was lifting. “You speak with a strong German accent. Why?”

  “A strong German accent? I was born in Chicago! I’m as American as you!” Astonished, Dad realized that under the duress of the accusations he had spoken slowly and deliberately, giving the impression he was struggling with the language. In fact, Dad’s parents were ethnic Germans from what is today Romania.

  The personnel director was satisfied, but wartime xenophobia trumped logic. The plant refused to reinstate Dad, who returned to Chicago. Within a week after his return, Mom recorded what happened.

  Fred told me at 2:30 a.m. Sunday, 5-17, really that he loves me… . One split second before he did so, I murmured, “Je t’aime,” which of course he did not understand. Ever since then we have been happier than ever before in our lives. Fred tells me the nicest things—that he loves me more all the time, that I get sweeter as time goes on, that h
e’s never loved anyone like he has loved me, that he has wanted many things badly in his life, but never anything half so much as he wants me.

  We have never had an argument since our first date, 8-15-41. So if we won’t be happily married, who will?

  In July they lay under a spangled night sky, the music from downtown Grant Park’s outdoor concert stirring the warm summer air—and their hearts. Dad gave Mom his Alpha Lambda Xi fraternity pin, telling her that, like the symbol on the pin, she was his guiding star. She in turn gave him her Waller High School ring. When Mom returned home, she wrote: “Tonight might be called the night of his proposal, for he called me ‘Mrs. Gartz’ and said how good that sounded.”

  The “Mrs. Gartz” comment was all Mom needed to hear, and she knew. Mom leaped into making wedding plans, and Dad went right along. Fear of rejection had been embedded in his childhood, so he had couched his proposal in an oblique allusion.

  That summer of 1942, while Mom was writing about her days of bliss, she began a separate handwritten record in a small spiral notebook labeled “Case History.” It was as if she didn’t want to taint her diary’s joyous expressions of love with another, darker reality.

  Her mother, my grandma Koroschetz, was losing her mind.

  CHAPTER 4: Madness and Marriage

  Lil, Mom, and her “Mama,” Grandma

  Koroschetz, 1922.

  1942

  Mom began recording her mother’s bizarre behavior on August 15, 1942, two months before she and Dad were to be married. In June of that year, my grandma Koroschetz had peered out the kitchen window of their Near North Chicago apartment on a blustery day, demanding, “Who’s making those doves fly around out there?”

  Mom looked through the glass, caught in her own swirl of confusion. “Mama, that’s just the wind blowing some scraps of paper.”

  “No! Someone’s made those doves come here just to aggravate me!” Grandma K shouted. It was the beginning of a downward slide. Always quick to anger, Grandma K was now not just bad-tempered but also paranoid and delusional.