Staring at the digital clock of a microwave oven for the last few seconds before the timer goes off took on a new meaning for me this year.
That’s been true since I spoke with the family of Mike Eberle for an obituary I wrote about the World War II veteran after his death in January.
Mr. Eberle had once crept up to a Nazi machine-gun nest, pulled the pin on a grenade and tried to count to four before throwing it. He mistimed it. That gave the Nazis time to scatter.
For the rest of his life, Mr. Eberle would count aloud the last four seconds as he watched the timer of a microwave tick down to zero.
“I’m still trying to get it right,” he’d joke.
It’s one of the many memories people’s loved ones have shared with me since I took over the obituaries beat from the Sun-Times’ award-winning writer Maureen O’Donnell this year.
It’s a marvel that a stranger’s voice calling from an unfamiliar number can, in moments, result in long conversations punctuated by laughter and quivering voices.
Even when I was covering breaking news, I’d occasionally write an obituary.
Like in 2010, when I wrote about the death and life of Elin Eisenberg, whose husband James Eisenberg, co-owner of Vienna Beef, asked me: “What am I going to do now? Life is going to stink.”
I never know what to say at times like these.
I thought about that call in April, when Mr. Eisenberg died. I wrote his obit, too.
The couple would eat at fancy restaurants downtown but always save room for a post-dinner bite at a hot dog joint, as Mr. Eisenberg made sure things were up to snuff.
I don’t know why certain details from obituaries have stayed with me, but here are a few of the unforgettable ones from the last year.
One was certainly the powerful attraction of Bertha Bell Cross’ legendary macaroni and cheese, hot water cornbread and banana pudding. Mrs. Cross was a South Sider who worked as a housekeeper for wealthy North Side families. She took pride in seeing grandson Jaylin D. McClinton attend law school and work as an intern at the White House under President Barack Obama.
One time, word got out that Mrs. Cross was cooking for her grandson’s birthday party, and adults from all around their Roseland neighborhood started asking: Can we come, too?
“My mom would say, ‘But it’s a kids birthday party. You don’t have any kids. Why do you want to come?’ ” McClinton said. “And they’d say: ‘Because of the food.’ And they’d be sure to bring a present.”
Then, there was the fearlessness of Thelma Rice, a South Sider who, at 84, after the death of her husband Fred Rice, a former Chicago police superintendent, fulfilled a life dream. She moved to a home in the foothills of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains in Santa Fe, New Mexico, because she’d long wanted to live like the famous artist Georgia O’Keeffe.
“She was a person who felt, ‘If you can imagine it, you can do it,’ ” said Judy Rice, her daughter.
I’ll also never forget hearing how the late Sun-Times photographer Jim Frost, known for having documented the famous Mirage tavern investigation, would put a glass of water next to his bed when he was a boy with big dreams growing up in rural Wisconsin and would wake up in the morning, and it would be frozen.
I can hear Joe Zucchero, the late owner of Mr. Beef and the inspiration for the FX show “The Bear,” telling his vegetarian daughter through a thick Chicago accent, “You’re going to have to eat meat sometime. You’re going to get sick, Lauren.”
I can imagine the satisfaction on the face of Oscar Lawton Wilkerson Jr., who was the last known surviving member of the famed Tuskegee Airmen in the Chicago area, when he and a pal would fly their small plane from Lansing Municipal Airport to other airports within 100 miles every Saturday, land, buy a hamburger and then head back home.
“We called it the $50 hamburger because it cost that much in gas,” his friend said.
Something else that sticks with me: the many faces and eye-popping creativity of JoJo Baby, the drag queen, 1990s club kid and dollmaker who was like a walking art installation.
And there were the eyes of Margie’s Candies owner George Poulos opening after a cat nap in a back booth of his Bucktown shop and seeing essentially the same store he saw when he woke from a nap as an infant. The place has hardly changed since his parents put his baby crib among racks of toffee and fudge.
It’s worth noting that I also write about living people who are doing interesting things and look forward to doing more of this as well in 2024.
Thanks for talking with me, Chicago.
