BY: JAMIE STIEHM

FOR RELEASE: WEDNESDAY, JUNE 19, 2024

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."

In the offseason, the coach often played hearts with his son's friends. Coach Harry didn't like to lose. Come August, he'd say, "Sorry, boys, I have to go back to work." He invited them to team practice.

No play dates scheduled. Zero social media.

Just kids walking to Randall School, adults socializing on the screen porches, the weekly potluck and basketball at the First Congo. When they played games in the streets, like "One o'clock and the Ghost didn't come," the police might come — but slowly, giving them time to hide.

"The next night, we resumed the game," Richard recalled.

Call it Midwestern charm.

In summer, "after supper was the best part of the day. The heat retreated in the breeze, the crickets were singing, and darkness didn't descend until 9 o'clock."

The boy from Madison's memoir is filled with words like "iceman" and "paper route," which have fallen out of common usage. In the '40s, there were war stamps, rationing and blackouts, but Franklin D. Roosevelt's confident voice on the radio bolstered the family.

Art history professor Jack Kienitz changed my father's life by taking a couple kids to the university tennis courts. The cement courts at West High became the playing field of his dreams, with regular partner John Stuhldreher.

Before long, Richard became part of the Madison tennis scene, which welcomed all comers. A place to belong, with monthly spaghetti dinners.

In a great building block for the rest of his life, Richard won the boys' city tennis championship, defeating John in the final.

The young doctor who lived across the streets, Robert Schilling, followed Richard's tennis career in the newspaper and became a medical mentor and lifelong friend. His wife, the theater teacher at West High, directed the school play — what else but "Our Town"?

I liked hearing of the eccentrics. Gerta, the neighborhood radical. The cantankerous economist next door, Walter Morton, who called President Eisenhower "Eisenhoover." Uncle Herb, who took Richard on fruitless fishing trips.

One day, a photographer stopped by the tennis courts and asked, "You kids want your picture in Life magazine?"

Several teens rode over to the UW Arboretum and climbed a tree spread over Lake Wingra. Some dived from the treetop. Richard was hanging onto a branch before jumping in.

The 1948 Life cover picture was by the famed photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt: "The Good Life in Madison, Wisconsin."

The author may be reached at JamieStiehm.com. To find out more about Jamie Stiehm and other Creators Syndicate columnists and cartoonists, please visit creators.com.

Photo credit: Tolga Ahmetler at Unsplash