In the Memory Glass: A Boy From Madison
Speaking to my father on Father's Day, he looked back on his boyhood in Madison, Wisconsin, to the time his father died when he was 8 -- just weeks before the Pearl Harbor calamity.
His mother, Marie, a nurse, found herself with four children to raise under their Spooner Street roof.
Yet there was no better place for a fatherless child. First, this shard of memory cut from his father, a formal doctor who died at age 40: "After grace, Father rang a bell for the maid to serve the meal and rang it again when it was time for coffee and dessert."
A medical faculty member on the frontier of tuberculosis testing, my grandfather Reuben's death in wartime meant no maid, no car, no Sunday drives across Wisconsin's farmland to visit Aunt Aden.
Christmas was coming, and the world turned upside down for Richard, told he had to be the family's "father" now -- shoveling snow, coal and all that.
In truth, a strict Germanic father might not be what the doctor ordered for his son.
The university neighborhood, bordered by the bell tower of the First "Congo" Congregational Church, had an array of adults who treated children kindly, spent time with them and casually kept an eye out.
Richard had a chubby Irish playmate whose father summoned them to listen to the Metropolitan Opera. Then he took them to the drugstore fountain for an ice cream soda.
Mr. Stavrum built a machine shop in his basement and taught kids how to string telegraph lines between their houses. He helped out with soapbox racers and set up a croquet court for everyone on the block.
A favorite boyhood story centered on University of Wisconsin football coach Harry Stuhldreher. Sports fans may know he played quarterback as one of the legendary "Four Horsemen of Notre Dame."
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