Death of Our Salesman

I was doing 45 miles-per-hour in a 30mph zone and thought for sure I’d be stopped by an officer, but I didn’t care. Heading east on Foster Avenue, I passed the snowy fields and barren trees of LaBaugh Woods Forest Preserve and knew there would be no cross streets for a mile or more -- so I notched it up another ten mph as I zipped past Gompers Park and its short hill where I used to sled when a tyke. I crossed Pulaski Road with the green light and knew Swedish Covenant Hospital was a mile or so ahead on the right and tried to recall where the parking lot was from my visits here five years earlier.

Today, Saturday, December 18, 1976, had been an eventful and fruitful day, but it had certainly begun far better than it was ending. Kent had come over and we had rehearsed our skits for the upcoming coffee house we were co-directing for Advent Lutheran Church in Streamwood, our choir’s annual fundraiser to purchase items like robes and music. Later I had rehearsed the youth group, the Luther League, in their skit “Dr. Frankenbeans.” Nancy and I were sponsors of the group and loved working with the church’s teens. Following rehearsal, we had held a brief steering committee meeting with the officers to plan future meetings and events.

Then from 7 to 8:30 pm, we had gone Christmas Caroling with the Luther League, visiting shut-ins of the church and bringing some Christmas joy to their lives, as well as ours. Finally, the singers had progressed to Pastor Wayne’s home for the annual Luther League Christmas Party, and while in the midst of some game, the phone call from Mom had come and I immediately left for the 30-mile drive to the hospital. Dad had just been taken by ambulance to the emergency room following a heart attack while in the washroom.



The drive down the Northwest Tollway and then the Kennedy Expressway remains a blurry memory. Somehow I knew what I would find at the hospital. Dad was 61, just four months shy of his 62nd birthday on April 9th when he was going to retire, but he never took care of himself. He suffered from high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes, never exercised, and he was a longtime alcoholic, unable and unwilling to kick the addiction. Seven years earlier he had suffered a stroke that had temporarily slurred his speech and given him a limp, and though he had pretty much fully recovered, he had not made any lifestyle changes.

I recalled coming home seven years earlier after a day of teaching at Wells High School and found him lying on his bed. Mom was at work and Dad was supposed to be working, too, and I panicked as I saw him there in bed, at first appearance looking dead. I feared the worst as I watched him for the longest time until finally I saw his chest rise and fall and felt a pulse in his wrist. That was about the most scared I had ever remembered feeling. Until now, as I hurried to the hospital, that is.

Dad had had some tough times in his life. His Dad, Christian Bader, had been killed in World War One fighting for the German army, having never had the chance to see his yet unborn son nor marry Dad’s mother, Eva Maria (Anna) Morlock (photo below).



Later, Anna and Dad joined other family members and immigrated to the United States, entering through Ellis Island and settling in Chicago. At age 28 he met 19-year-old Edith Barteldes, my mom, at the Schiller (German) Club Ball. They married in 1943, had two great kids, and created a wonderful, loving home life. Dad worked for Stanley Tools for many years, and after being laid off when business slacked, he eventually got a job running the hardware department at Wieboldt’s Department Store in the Lincoln/Belmont/Ashland shopping district, just blocks from our Paulina Street apartment which was owned by Grandpa. But Dad didn’t just sell tools -- he had mastered them, too. I always believed there wasn’t a thing he couldn’t build or repair, and his workshop had every tool imaginable which he lovingly taught me how to use and care for.

As I roared down Foster and passed the adjacent Montrose and Bohemian National Cemeteries, I feared the worst. My thoughts rewound to the last time I had driven this same street at high speed nearly five years earlier -- but under far more joyous circumstances. Nancy and I had been living in our first apartment on Edmunds Street in Jefferson Park, and at 4:15 am, her water had broken and I had rushed her to Swedish Covenant Hospital for the birth of our first son, Scott Alan, on April Fools’ Day of 1972. How excited Dad had been and how he had loved Scott these last five years.



I was grateful that Dad had survived the stroke, had been able to attend our wedding in 1969, and had gotten to know his grandson. But down deep somewhere I lamented, fearful that he would never get to know his second grandson, Steven Andrew, who would be born in just seven weeks.

I found the parking lot nearest the hospital emergency room entrance, and as I hurried to the door I realized that Mom and Dad had only been in their new home for ten days – the only home they had ever owned. He had to be okay because he had so much to live for, what with Christmas coming, and his second grandson about to be born, and owning a new home to enjoy. I entered and saw Mom, crying and crestfallen, and I knew immediately that my worst fears were realized. The hospital clergyman escorted me into the room where Dad’s body lay on a table and I spent many minutes sobbing and silently saying goodbye, my hand gently holding his already cold hand, and after kissing his forehead, I exited, took Mom home, and began the long process of funeral preparations. I called home to inform Nancy, spent the night on Mom’s couch, and the next day, with Mom and my sister Linda, we made the arrangements.



Christmas, 1977, was but one short week after his death and barely days after his funeral, and its joy was tempered and muted for our entire extended family. Just six weeks earlier, our dear Uncle Fritz had been tragically killed in a grisly traffic accident while returning from Ames, Iowa, late on November 11th in a snowstorm. Involved in a fender-bender accident, Uncle Fritz had walked to the rear of his car to survey the damage when another vehicle had slammed into him, pinning him between the cars and amputating his two legs. He bled out before help could arrive. Our annual Christmas Eve celebration, usually one of the highlights of the year with carol singing, great food, and gift exchanges, was instead a bittersweet gathering which reflected both the joy of the birth of Christ and the sorrow of the untimely passing of two of the three remaining patriarchs of our extended family.



Memories and love survive to this day, along with the usual regrets over "what could have been" had he lived longer.