Stories in this section:
1. “A Legendary Love”, the story of my parents’ romance
2. How Karen and I came to be in the Academy Award nominated film “Finding Vivian Maier”
3. An article about my brother Charles
4. Remarks about my brother Milton
5. How I came to sing a Ukrainian piece at a Music Institute of Chicago recital
6. A story involving mathematics, music, and genealogy with many surprises
Story 1: “A Legendary Love”, the story of my parents’ romance
My parents Nathan Usiskin and Esther Chukerman were born 37 days apart in 1904 (he on November 3rd and she on December 10th) and within 100 yards of each other on the same street in Chicago. We can be certain of the location of her birth, for the birth certificate details that she was delivered at home by a midwife at 240 W. 14th St., a place less than a mile south and a half mile west of the Loop. The area was called the “West Side” just two short blocks south of the famous Maxwell Street bazaar and was heavily Jewish in population. When my father was born, his family lived at 258 W. 14th St. Did the Chukerman and Usiskin families know each other? There is no evidence that they did. It was a quite crowded area. In the 1910 census, 58 people are listed as living on the same side of the street between these two addresses.
These addresses do not reflect the standardization that took place in Chicago in 1909 by which all addresses in the city were determined by their north-south distance from Madison Ave. and their east-west distance from State St. Under the standardized address system, which is still in place today, my mother was born at 671 W. 14th St. and my father at 711 W. 14th St. These locations are today just west of the Dan Ryan Expressway.
By 1910, when my parents started school, my mother’s family had moved to 2117 W. 12th St. and my father’s family had moved to 3039 N. California Ave., putting them in totally different neighborhoods about six miles apart. At the California Ave. address, my father and his younger brother Norman and older sisters Dora and Minda lived on one floor, while on the other floor lived his aunt Clara, her husband Leon Oboler, and their children Minnie, Archie, and Eli. From this address my father went to Lake View High School, from which he graduated in 1920 at the age of 15. My mother’s family moved twice between 1910 and 1920. When my mother started McKinley High School in 1918, she lived at 982 W. 12th St. She went there for at most two years, for in 1920 her family was living at 1159 E. 54th St. in the Hyde Park neighborhood, and she graduated from Hyde Park High School.
In late 1924 or early 1925, when they were both just turning 20, Nathan’s first cousin Minnie fixed him up with Esther. Minnie was 6 months younger than Esther and I surmise that the two young women had met socially, for though my mother did not go to college, Minnie was attending the University of Chicago, which put her in the Hyde Park neighborhood.
Their dating was more than casual. In a well-worn commercial carton printed with a large picture of a girl selling boxes of Carter’s Underwear, my father kept souvenirs from dances, programs from plays, small address books, and scraps of paper. I first examined the contents of this box only after my father’s death. The contents tell of a social life my father never mentioned. Three items in particular relate to his dating my mother at this time.
There is an envelope dated May 28, 1925, mailed from Esther to Nathan. Inside is a formal typewritten invoice from Esther Chukerman, 3507 Douglas Boulevard, Chicago, Illinois, “To Entertainment Received while installing Double Entry System for J. Chukerman & Sons” for the amount of $100.00”. That he was working for her family is already an indication of a serious relationship. What did she do to entertain him? There would be no piano at this wholesale paper business, so she must have sung. What did he do? A double entry system is bookkeeping. Shouldn’t he be getting money rather than giving it? And the amount is exorbitant. Obviously there is more going on here than business.
A second item in that envelope explains it all. It is an actual check from Nathan Usiskin to Esther Chukerman, but the name of the bank has been crossed out, replaced by “Bank of Love”, and the amount of the check is “One Million and More Units of Happiness”. And, on the back, in place of the endorsement, is written, “In partial payment of bill rendered May 28, 1925. No discount taken or desired.”
My future parents were obviously deeply in love when they were both 20. But they broke up and my mother married someone else less than 18 months later. What happened? My father had told me that he didn’t know.
The third item in the memorabilia box is the draft of a letter dated Nov. 11, 1925 from Nathan to Esther. We know it is a draft because words and even paragraphs are scratched out. It contains clues as to what happened.
Esther responded on personal stationery with a formal letter dated Sunday, Nov. 15, 1925. I put this letter in a fancy font that closely resembles her remarkable everyday handwriting.
Six months after Esther wrote the above letter, May 28, 1926, an announcement of her engagement to Abraham Corn is in The Sentinel, a weekly magazine devoted to Jewish life in Chicago. They were married October 31, 1926. Eleven months later, in the September 18, 1927 Chicago Tribune is an announcement of Esther’s debut recital in Kimball Hall in downtown Chicago on an unspecified Sunday afternoon at 3PM. A review of that recital appears in the Tribune November 7, 1927. There it is noted: “Esther Chukerman Corn, coloratura soprano, at Kimball Hall delivered an impressively glittering rendition of Proch’s Variations, likewise an encore and an arrangement of a Chopin Mazurka, all of them in good voice and with the style of a musician.” Fifteen months later she gave birth to Milton and her career as a serious classical singer ended. Abe Corn never let her perform any more. I am told that she also wanted to learn to drive and he never let her do that, either.
In February 1934, five years after Milton’s birth, Esther gave birth to a stillborn girl who was never named. The next year Charles was born but in the summer of 1938, at the age of 2, he lost his left arm in a car accident. Through all this, Abe was apparently quite cruel to my mother both physically and emotionally. After the accident, Esther filed for divorce, Abe did not contest it, and the divorce was granted quickly, on December 5, 1938. Esther got custody of the children and all of their material possessions. Abe had unlimited rights to visit the children and had to pay alimony of $20/month.
Eleven years, through what would have been the nurturing years of a career as a classical or opera singer, were too long away from the craft. She could not hope to recover a career she had worked for. She turned instead to the ethnic circuit, singing popular, Yiddish, and Hebrew songs at synagogues, Zionist meetings, and such. In the first half of 1940 alone, her name is in the Chicago Tribune five times for musical events, four times as a singer and once as an accompanist for her good friend Evelyn Hattis Fox, with whom she often performed.
While all this was happening, Nathan, too, had tried to carve out a career and with it came his share of disappointments. In 1926, having gone to night school for at least three years, Nathan received a diploma in commerce from Northwestern University, a certificate equivalent to about 2.5 years of college work. He had many jobs before and after this time, working in an office as a bookkeeper. Three times he tried to pass the CPA exam but he was unable to pass all three parts of the exam at one time, which at that time was the requirement. Around 1931 he got a job with a new company, Hills McCanna, a manufacturer of industrial valves, where in 7 years he rose from bookkeeper to office manager. When Hills McCanna gave him the authority to hire anyone he wanted for the office except not someone who was Jewish (they knew he was Jewish but somehow let him know that they thought he was atypical of Jews), he left the company and decided he would never work for anyone else again.
That same year, in May 1938, Nathan’s father died of leukemia. Because his father sold life insurance, my guess is that there was a substantial policy that was able to support the family for some time. Still it was now up to him to be the sole family breadwinner and, since he was not going to work for someone else, he started looking for a partner, someone who might oversee the manufacturing of items in a business somewhat parallel to Hills McCanna while he, Nathan, managed the office and sales. Unable to find someone quickly in Chicago, in 1939 he traveled with his mother to Florida where his sister Min lived [1] and then in 1940 they went to New York where his sister Dora lived. And so he had no knowledge that Esther was divorced.
On or just after Thursday, July 4, 1940, Nathan came back to Chicago from New York. On Saturday he spoke with his cousin Minnie Perlstein, who by then was married with three children, a practicing dermatologist whose office was in her home at 4743 Drake Avenue in the Albany Park neighborhood of Chicago. Minnie invited him to dinner at her place the next Tuesday, and when he consented to come, she asked him if she could invite Esther. He agreed.
In recalling these events to me, Nathan remarked that there was no way he was going to see Esther for the first time in 15 years in the presence of other people. And so he called her immediately, and the next day they saw each other. I imagine that this was a meeting in which each of them was careful not to say anything that would cause difficulties, that each went through the difficulties they had encountered in the intervening years, and that the evening ended with some sort of embrace, enough to rekindle a love that had been dormant all that time.
Tuesday, July 9th, after the dinner at Minnie’s, he walked Esther home. This was no ordinary walk; it is a full 3 miles to 6422 North Mozart Avenue, where Esther lived. Nathan said that on this walk he and Esther talked a lot and “decided that they had a lot in common”. I think this is a gross understatement. It is quite possible that during that walk they decided to get married as quickly as possible.
But there were two stumbling blocks to a quick marriage, both revolving around Nathan’s mother Sarah. Members of the Chukerman family called her “the bitch” because of a belief that she caused the original break-up, that she somehow purveyed to the Chukermans that Esther was not the right girl for her son. Yet Esther and Nathan wanted her blessing of the marriage. And they wanted her present at the wedding. But Sarah had been in New York with Nathan, staying with her daughter Dora, and had not returned to Chicago.
Three letters written in July 1940 and found in this box give ample evidence as to what transpired in the six weeks between the dinner at Minnie Perlstein’s and the wedding. The first was written July 23rd and is from Nathan to his mother. Here is part of that letter.
The second letter is dated July 25th and is from Esther to Sarah.
Nathan now adds his words to Esther’s letter.
The third letter is from my father’s sister Dora, from New York. It is dated August 13th. Only the beginning is quoted here, but it gives you some indication of the surprise and speed with which all this happened.
Esther and Nathan were married August 20, 1940, three days less than six weeks from the time they first saw each other after the 15-year lapse. But from these letters we learn that they were engaged in far less than three weeks, and they would have married sooner had my father’s mother been in Chicago.
An announcement of the marriage was in The Sentinel August 29, 1940, as follows: “CORN-USISKIN. The Edgewater Beach Hotel was the setting for the marriage of Esther Corn, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. J. Chuckerman (sic) of 6422 North Mozart Street, to Nathan Usiskin, son of Mrs. Sarah Usiskin of 5408 North Kenmore Avenue, on Tuesday morning, August 20, Rabbi S. Felix Mendelsohn solemnized the ceremony, and a charming feature of the event was the rendering of several vocal selections by the bride. The new Mr. and Mrs. Usiskin returned to the city after a week's wedding trip to Wisconsin Dells.”
Ann Gluskoter, a first cousin of Esther’s, once told me that she was not invited to the wedding but she came anyway.
In later years, my father said that his life began when he met Esther in 1940. He would give as evidence that within two months of the wedding, he found the business partner he was seeking and they opened a storefront manufacturing business on Montrose Avenue in Chicago named “E & N Manufacturing Company”, for Esther and Nathan. Later the name was changed to “Enco Manufacturing Company”, with the “En” of “Enco” standing for Esther and Nathan.
Esther was 35 when she married Nathan. It is understandable that, given the tragedies that had befallen the results of her last two pregnancies, she did not want to have any more children. But Nathan very much wanted a child, and so Esther agreed to have one more child.
Although all the details of the story that I have related here were not known to me as I was growing up, the broad story was known to everyone in the family and to many of my parents’ friends. My parents’ love for each other was legendary, and these letters back that up. Yet I still wondered whether their love remained strong, and whether it was mutual. The box of letters included some written from my mother to my father while he was on business trips to Canada and New York. Even short excerpts indicate that the flames continued to burn as bright as ever.
The next day was her 43rd birthday.
These letters, together with the memories I have of my parents from my youth, confirm that my parents’ love was legendary but definitely not legend. It was the real thing.
Footnotes:
[1] My father seems to have traveled with his mother to both places. The trip to Florida was certainly bittersweet, for his sister had given birth to a stillborn male child in September 1938, the only baby she ever had. Thus in a space of five months, his sister lost both her father and a baby. This baby, who would have been my first cousin, was never mentioned in all the conversations I had with my father, including conversations in which he mentioned traveling to Florida. The only reason he gave for this trip was to look for a partner with whom to start a business.
[2] I was a month shy of my 5th birthday, so it is very doubtful I had much to do with the book or card, though by this time I could read and print.
Story 2. How Karen and I came to be in the Academy Award nominated film “Finding Vivian Maier”
On March 6, 2010, while I was traveling to Thailand for a conference, Karen sent the following e-mail to me and to our children Robert and Laura:
“You won’t believe this one. I got a call from a guy named John Maloof who asked if I knew Vivian Meier [sic]. John had gotten our name and number from a list of “emergency” numbers found in Vivian’s belongings. Vivian died in April 2009 leaving a collection of 100,000 photographs in a locker. John got the photos from an auction. He posted them on a blog and now her photos are world famous (note links to articles about her in other countries on John ‘s blog), and a book is coming out about her. John wanted to know anything we could tell him about her personality. [“Strange duck” came to my mind, but I didn’t say anything. I also remember that she ate all the fat on meat, even when there was a lot of fat on the meat, but I didn’t say anything. And I didn’t mention “the boxes”.] She worked for Phil Donahue as a nanny in about 1975. Donahue will be interviewed about her. John asked if we’d be willing to be interviewed. He said some of her photos might even contain pictures of our kids because some of her pictures are of kids. I said I would talk to you and we would compare what we remember and then send him an email with some info. His email address is john_maloof@sbcglobal.net. The blog about Vivian that he created is www.vivianmaier.com. So I thought maybe the 4 of us could pool our memories about Vivian (Robert and Laura might remember stuff we don’t remember) and then write an email. I don’t remember what triggered her not working for us anymore.”
I responded when I got to Thailand.
“My recollection is that we fired her because she was crazy and we couldn't take it any more. She bought two-day-old food for herself even though we told her she could buy any food she wants. She angered taxi drivers and we were afraid taxis would not come to our house any more. I'm sure Robert and Laura have some good stories. If this whole thing is on the up-and-up, we should respond. First let's look to see if there are any pictures of any of us.”
When I returned to the United States, I spoke with John. He asked, “Did I remember a Vivian Maier who had worked for us?” “Yes.” “Did I remember when?” “No, but I could easily determine that from my records.” After hanging up the phone, I looked into my tax records and saw that she had worked for us for about a year, from September 1987 to September 1988, while Robert was 6 and Laura was 4 and we lived in Glenview. And thus began a story that took us ultimately into a movie that was an Academy Award nominee for best feature documentary in 2016.
The story of Vivian Maier is now rather well-known and is as Karen described in her e-mail. Vivian is sometimes known as the “nanny photographer”, discovered after her death to have left well over 100,000 photos, quite a number of them felt to be of great artistic quality. The photos were among other possessions that were in a storage locker whose contents were auctioned, the photos mainly to be purchased by Maloof and Jeff Goldstein. Her photos have been the subject of art exhbits around the world and she and her work have been the subject of numerous books.[1] Maloof’s discovery of the value of her photos is detailed in the film “Finding Vivian Maier”, which he and Charlie Siskel directed.
At the time that John Maloof contacted us, he knew little about Vivian. He was trying to find out who she was. He had found our name and Glenview address in a small address book of Vivian’s that he had obtained along with the negatives. He went to the address and learned we were no longer living there, but had the foresight (or perhaps guided by the residents) to go next door, where he met Bonnie Gerth. The Gerths are on our annual new year’s letter mailing list, so Bonnie knew exactly where we lived, and I assume John took it from there.
Vivian Maier (as Vivian Meier) began working for us in August 1987. Her last paycheck was in late September 1988, indicating that we probably let her go early that month. She shopped and cooked for us, did light housekeeping, and was a live-in baby sitter to our children Robert and Laura (ages 6 and 4 in September 1987), paid for 5 days a week. Robert was then in 2nd grade; Laura in a Montessori kindergarten. Karen would drop Laura off and pick her up at the Montessori school, while Robert took a bus to his school, so most of the day Vivian was on her own. Vivian did not drive but took a taxi to shop for groceries Ultimately we needed someone who could drive and so we let her go. Like many (all?) of the other people for whom she worked, we had no idea that she was a serious photographer.
Immediately after John’s call I decided to look up Vivian Maier in ancestry.com. On April 30, 2010, John came to our house in Winnetka with a cameraman and interviewed us. He brought with him 10 pictures that he thought might be of Robert and Laura, and he gave those pictures to us. At the time, they did not seem particularly artsy to me, but now a couple of them do seem to have been shot at a distance and angle that makes them quite carefully framed. John also brought with him a November 1982 letter from Karen’s father Herb to us that was found in Vivian’s papers. Why it was there we will never know.
That day I wrote the following, all of which turns out to have been accurate. I shared what I wrote with John.
“Vivian is in the SSDI as Vivian Maier, b. 1 Feb 1926, D. 21 Apr 2009, SSN 096-20-4178, issued in NY before 1951. It is almost certain that she is the Vivian Maier who in the 1930 census (enumerated 7 Apr 1930) is 4 years old, living at 720 St. Mary’s Street, Bronx, NY, with her mother Marie (transcribed by ancestry.com as Clarie), age 32, married, a boarder in the household of Jeanne Bertrand, a single female age 49. They are the only three in the household. It is reported that Marie and Jeanne were born in France and came to the U.S. in 1892 and 1914, respectively. Marie was married at 22. Vivian’s father is said to have been born in Austria. Significantly, Jeanne is a portrait photographer. Marie is a practical nurse.
“I searched www.italiangen.org to find a record of the marriage of Vivian’s mother. It is very possible that she is Maria M. Jaussand, who married Charles Maier 11 May 1919 in Manhattan, NY. However, I could find no Maria Jaussand born around 1897 or who emigrated to the U.S. at New York around 1914.
“In 1920 a Marie Maier was living at 162 E. 56th St. in Manhattan, NY, with her husband Charles and his parents William and Marie. She is 21 but this enumeration is 21 Jan 1920. While the age does not agree with the age at which in 1930 she is said to have married, and here she is said to have come to the U.S. in 1915, Marie is born in France and Charles in Austria, and French is Marie’s native language. This does seem to be the Maria Jaussand who married Charles Maier and there is enough to think that this gives more evidence that she is the mother of Vivian.”
John wanted to interview Robert and Laura but they were not often in Winnetka. The filmed interview took place in our home on December 28, 2011. By this time there had been much publicity about Vivian, including an article in the January 2011 Chicago Magazine that mentioned us, and an exhibition of her pictures at the Chicago Cultural Center. And, by this time, the filming was done with the intent that parts might be in a movie that John Maloof was directing about finding Vivian. At the interview, Laura did not have any memories of Vivian. Robert remembered some things about her, including a time that they walked all the way to downtown Glenview, a 3-mile distance! The same day Jack Helbig, a playwright, came to our home because he was planning to produce a play about Vivian and he wanted to know how she walked, and we told him that Karen could not show him over the phone so he had to see it in person!
There was at this time competition between John Maloof and Jeff Goldstein, who himself had purchased 17,500 negatives, to publish a book about Vivian. We met with Jeff and gave him essentially the same information that we had given John, but when the BBC called us in January 2012 to ask if they could interview us for a movie, we decided to be loyal to John and declined to be interviewed.
In November 2012 we are mentioned in an article in the New York Times. An article, “The Nanny’s Secret”, by William Meyers, in the January 3, 2012 issue of the Wall Street Journal, mentions us. We were interviewed by the Christian Science Monitor. A few friends and relatives wrote us that they had seen our names mentioned in these articles. They were quite surprised.
“Finding Vivian Maier” had its Chicago-area debut on April 2, 2014, at the Century Centre Cinema in Highland Park. Of course we attended. We appear a few times in the movie, but Karen is mistakenly identified in an overprinted name and at the end of the film as Laura Usiskin. Other than that blunder, which we mentioned to John, we were quite pleased with how we appear. John said he would try to correct in future versions of the movie, but we think because the movie had already been released, the error could not be easily corrected and to our knowledge this error has never been corrected. Many people over the years have seen this movie, some on airplanes, some on TV, a few in theaters, and all are surprised when we appear. But they are not as surprised as this entire affair was to us. Who else from our past has a compelling story that we do not know about? This entire affair was a kick for us.
In 2017 John Maloof gave to the University of Chicago 500 vintage prints made by Vivian. In 2019 he added 2700 more vintage prints to the university. They are housed in the John Maloof Collection of Vivian Maier at the University of Chicago’s Hannah Holborn Gray Special Collections Research Center and available from the reading room of the library. My being a faculty member at the university when Vivian worked for us is in no way related to this gift.
Books about Vivian Maier mentioning us: In Vivian Maier: Out of the Shadows, by Richard Cahan and Michael Williams, Karen and I are mentioned. In Vivian Maier: A Photographer’s Life and Afterlife, by Pamela Bannos, in which a timeline of communities in which Vivian worked is given, Karen is mentioned (though not identified with our location). In Vivian Maier Developed: The Untold Story of the Photographer Nanny, by Ann Marks, we are mentioned four times in the acknowledgements (two of these as Zalman and Karen Usiskin, and two as Zalman and Laura Usiskin), but not in the body of the text. We gave permission to be quoted in Vivian Maier, A Photographer Found, by Marvin Heiferman, but I have not seen the book.
Story 3: An article about my brother Charles
The article below is from the Fall 1993 issue of advantagemid-town, the newsletter of the Mid-Town Tennis Club in Chicago.
Charles passed away in June 1996.
Story 4: Remarks about my brother Milton
Milton passed away in August 2020. These remarks are based on those made by me at his funeral.
This is an occasion for mourning, but it is also an occasion for celebrating the life of my brother Milton, for he said often not only to me but to many of you here or with us via Zoom that he was proud of his life, felt good that he had lived to the age of 91, and had no regrets.
Until recent months he led an active life, visiting friends, eating breakfast in the Marina complex, and having lunch or dinner out with friends at least a couple of times a week at any one of a number of fine restaurants. He kept meticulous personal records even into August, even after he had been in the hospital for the first of three times with the heart failure that ultimately got him. He was proud of his physical strength but we might say we know him for his strength of character. And he was proud of his independence, notable for living in the same apartment in Marina Towers for 42 years.
Most of you know Milt from his later life, so I would like to take a few minutes to review Milt’s early life. He was born in 1929 in Chicago, the eldest child of Esther Chukerman Corn, the wife of Abraham J. Corn, A.J., a dentist. In 1935, Esther and A.J. had a second son, Charles. It was not a good marriage and Milt describes A.J. as a mean father. A.J. learned that if you moved and painted the apartment before you moved, you did not have to pay the last month’s rent. So Milt says he moved every year and, as a result, has no friends dating back to his early childhood.
Milt graduated from Boone Elementary School and Senn High School in Chicago. One summer he worked at Wrigley Field selling cokes. He went to Wright Jr. College and to one of the very first classes at Navy Pier, the name given at that time to the University of Illinois branch in Chicago. These places only offered two years of college, so he transferred to Roosevelt College, now Roosevelt University. While in college, he worked selling shoes and as a stock boy at department stores downtown. In 1951 he enlisted in the army. The Korean War had begun one year earlier. He had spent his sophomore year of high school at Riverside Military School in Gainesville, Georgia, so the discipline of army life was known to him.
I will tell you two stories today, both related to his army service. The day after enlisting, he went to Fort Sheridan, which is just north of the north suburbs of Chicago. Here is the story as he told it to me just two months ago. “The very first experience was dental. Guys are coming back, their mouths are toothless. I get in the chair and the man says, “We’re going to have to take 7 or 8 of them out.” And I said, “No, sir. You ain’t taking any of them out.” He says, “Private, I’m a lieutenant.” I said, “I don’t care. You’re not taking any tooth out of my mouth.” So he leaves and brings back the captain. “What, you don’t want to have your teeth fixed?” The one time in my life when A.J. was worth something. I said, “My father is Lt. Col. Abraham Joseph Corn, D.D.S., in charge of Walter Reed hospital in WWII and he saw my mouth less than a week ago. If you want to take teeth out, I’ll give you his office number.” He told me, “Well, we’ll have to look at it again. We’ll watch it very carefully.” [Though A.J. served in WWII, it is not clear to me that A.J. ever had that rank or was at Walter Reed.]
After basic training at Fort Riley in Kansas and further training at Fort Belvoir outside Washington DC, Milt went to Korea. He served in Korea on the front lines, in the winter in mountains where he had frostbite that plagued him his entire life, in combat that he said was at times hand-to-hand. He saw fellow soldiers die and thought he would, too. When he did not die in Korea, he attributed it to God saving him.
My second story, also told verbatim from Milton. Many of you have heard this story but he wanted to tell it to me three times in recent weeks, so I feel comfotable in repeating it here. I am quoting him verbatim. “There were two rabbis in Korea, about 20 priests. They were everybody’s rabbi. I’m in the CP [Command Post] and its Chanuka and they have brought me a candelabra. “Corn, you have a patrol tonight.” “Not until I do my prayers.” “How long is that going to take?” “A couple of minutes.” I do my prayers and light the candles. The next night I have to go on patrol and it’s December and it’s 20 to 30 below and the place is filled with Koreans. They did our laundry. I put on my felt hat and started in Hebrew. One said, “What’s he saying? What’s he saying?” The people inside had never heard Hebrew. “Shh. He’s talking to God.” Now I’m putting on my weapon. “You talk to God? What’s he say to you.” “You charge too much for laundry.” The only thing I could think of. “You talk to God, you free.” A couple of guys said, “Can you teach us those prayers?””
He was discharged from the army in January of 1953. He was weeks shy of his 24th birthday. Just over a year later he married Phyllis Krone, with whom he had been fixed up before he entered the army while she was a high school student. He tells the story that he wrote on a slip of paper that he would marry her and slipped the paper under her door. She was 19 when they married. Milt wanted children but Phyllis did not want to bear children, so they adopted two children, Susan and Steven. As Milton described to me, Phyllis was a good person and a good mother, but the marriage was not a good one. He moved out in 1978 and they divorced some time later. Phyllis died in 2000. Susan passed away in 2013. Steven is here today.
Both before and after Korea, Milt had worked in my father’s business selling the machine tool accessories that the company manufactured. He did not like that job or that business and started selling shoes at Marshall Field’s and then at several shoe stores on the south side. He was then and remained for his entire life an exceedingly good salesman. He opened a shoe store, Milton’s Shoes, on the far south side, and operated it for a few years before moving into selling insurance, the profession he had for the rest of his life.
Milt loved people and had a large number of long-time close friends. Two women were particularly significant in the later half of his life: first, Sheila Elsberg and some years later, Irene Bulick.
Until the events of 9/11/2000, Milt did not view his service in Korea as anything worth talking about, but 9/11 caused him to become very proud of his military service for the country, and he became very active in veterans’ groups, speaking at reunions of veterans and going with other veterans on honor trips to Washington and then to Korea on his 85th birthday. He proudly wore veteran paraphernalia. Milt is among people listed online as a source for the CIA and almost everyone who knew Milt has probably been offered a CIA pen or some other CIA memorabilia. We have buried him with a 40th infantry hat on his head and a CIA pen in his suit jacket pocket. Rest in peace, Milton.
Story 5: How I came to sing a Ukrainian piece at a Music Institute of Chicago recital
I have been taking voice lessons at the Music Institute of Chicago since 2014. As part of the learning process, students are encouraged to sing in public or quasi-public recitals along with other students. Barbara Martin, my voice teacher, has a recital of her students once a year. The Voice Department, which she chairs, has two recitals a year. And there also are recitals of adult students twice a year. In the spring of 2022, it happened that the Adult Student recital and the Voice Department recital occurred on the same day, April 30th.
Mark George, the President and CEO of the Music Institute is a very fine pianist, and twice in the past had accompanied me at these recitals - quite an honor. In a conversation in early April, he said that, to express sympathy for the current situation in Ukraine, he had looked for and found an appropriate Ukrainian song, No. 5 of Silvestrov’s “Silent Songs” and wondered if I would be willing to sing it at the Adult Student recital. I transliterated the Cyrillic into our alphabet “Proshchai, Svite, Proshchai, Zemle”, found a German translation of the lyrics and used Google Translate to translate them into English, “Farewell, World, Farewell, Soil. But the song had to be sung in Ukrainian and I tried to check my pronunciation against the various recordings of the song found on youtube.
The composer, Valentin Silvestrov [b. 1937] is Ukraine’s best-known living classical composer. His works include nine symphonies, poems for piano and orchestra, miscellaneous pieces for chamber orchestra, three string quartets, a piano quintet, three piano sonatas, piano pieces, chamber music, cantatas, and songs. Silent Songs is a song cycle of 24 pieces written to the words of famous poets, including Pushkin, Yeats, and others. “Farewell, world …”, the fifth song in the cycle, was later employed by Silvestrov in his Requiem for Larissa, written in tribute to his late wife. It was reported that during the Russian invasion, Silvestrov refused to leave his country despite his age.
The words of “Farewell, world…” are from “Dream”, a poem of Taras Shevchenko [1814-1861], a Ukrainian writer, political figure, and ethnographer. Shevchenko’s literary output has been said to be the foundation of modern Ukrainian literature. He was politically convicted for explicitly promoting the independence of Ukraine – the theme of “Dream”, writing poems in the Ukrainian language, and ridiculing members of the czar’s family.
The combination of words and music of these two artists gives rise to a piece of unusually profound sadness. Here is a rough English translation.
Verses 1 and 4:
Farewell, world, farewell, soil.
You hard, ungrateful earth!
My heavy sorrow, my torment,
I want to hide in the clouds.
Verse 2:
And you, my Ukraine,
widow without fortune,
I will fly to you
from cloud to conversation.
Verse 3:
Maintain dialogue in silence,
get advice from you
Will trickle down as dew,
Stealthy at night.
A video of the performance can be found at https://youtu.be/NG5WkHhVV6Y.
Story 6: A story involving mathematics, music, and genealogy with many surprises
On February 1, 2023, I received a large envelope from David Masunaga, a mathematics teacher at Iolani School in Honolulu. I was surprised. I have known David many years from meetings of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, NCTM - we have both been on the board of that organization, though at different times - but in my memory David and I never had as much as a long conversation nor have we ever exchanged an e-mail. The package contained a Panasonic catalog in Japanese, commercial sets of 2 and 3 wooden pencils wrapped in plastic, and the following handwritten cover letter:
Dear Professor Zal,
I went on a quick trip to Japan over the winter break and found this Panasonic catalog of vacuum cleaners at an electronics store. Many moons ago you did a week long geometry institute for us in Honolulu where, among many things, you introduced us to the curves of constant width and the fact that a Reuleaux triangle-shaped drill bit can cut square holes. So with the understanding that this can negotiate right angled corners as well, take a look at pp. 15-20 - the Panasonic RULO! (Btw, take a look at the letter "O" in the RULO logo.) Enclosed are some Reuleaux-ish pencils for your amusement.
With warmest regards for the New Year,
Dave Masunaga
The cross-sections of the pencils were Reuleaux triangles. The "O" in the logo was a Reuleaux triangle. An additional included page showed a Reuleaux triangle nesting perfectly in one square title of a tile floor. Dave included his e-mail address, which I have omitted here. But it enabled me to respond the next day.
Dear David:
Your package arrived today. Wow! What a surprise!
I have no memory of mentioning the Reuleaux triangle in talks in Hawaii. Your memory is fantastic!
That Panasonic calls these vacuum cleaners "Rulo" is brilliant. How did you find the Reuleaux pencils? They look so much like ordinary pencils.
It was really nice of you to remember something from so long ago and to send this stuff to me.
Best wishes for good health and happiness to you and yours.
Zal Usiskin
P.S. About a year ago I was given a personal website by my children, <www.zalmanusiskin.com> You might find it interesting to visit even though there is no mention of a Reuleaux triangle!
The next day Dave responded back. He had visited this website.
Hi Zal,
Glad you liked the Reuleaux Rulo and Reuleaux tchotchkes (how often do you see THOSE two words side-by-side?).
And what a FASCINATING website! I want to go through it all, but as it is, my geometry students are waiting for me to get started. I only had a chance to glance through the music page so far:
1) WOW -- you studied with Malcolm Bilson in his "pre-fortepiano" days! Amazing.
2) Having done choral works under a number of luminaries, here's a clip of someone from his early years (around the time you performed under him):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8u6MoA7fv0
3) What did the martian say to Schubert? (You should know this one, but you can also scroll WAY WAY down for the answer.)
With hurried aloha,
dave
(Answer: Take me to your lieder.)
I was astonished Dave had heard of Malcolm Bilson - that is hardly a household name! I watched the youtube clip; the "someone from his early years" was Seiji Ozawa. I responded immediately.
Hello Dave:
Another "Wow"! I had no idea you were so into music. To know about Malcolm Bilson! Now you must tell me about your music background!
I don't recall ever seeing the "What's My Line" clip with Ozawa. We sang the Poulenc "Gloria" and the Faure "Requiem" under him at Ravinia (the summer home of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra ) in the summer of 1964, when - just as to the What's My Line panelists - he was basically unknown. That summer was his first summer of many as the principal conductor of the CSO at Ravinia - before he started his long career in Boston. He was very very good.
So a story. The occasion of singing under him was as a concert in a month-long North American tour of the Harvard Glee Club and Radcliffe Choral Society. Two weeks later we sang the Poulenc under Charles Munch at a summer concert of the Vancouver Symphony. Munch, who had then recently retired from decades conducting the Boston Symphony Orchestra was known for his interpretations of 20th century French music. So we sang under the past and the future musical directors of the BSO. We expected a lot from Munch because of his reputation and we got none of it! Munch did not understand the Poulenc at all, whereas Ozawa brought out the wonderful character of the music. But it is possible that the difference was not so much with the ability of the conductors as with the ability of the orchestras.
And 45 years later... in 2009...there is an overlap with another section of my website, namely the Genealogy section.
I have a 2nd cousin named George Benedict Zukerman - named George after George Washington because he was born on February 22nd, Benedict after the philosopher Benedict Spinoza because it was thought he might be a descendant - but now we know that was impossible because Spinoza had no children! George will be 96 next month. Despite my mother being a 1st cousin of his father, I did not know George until 2009 when he was in his 80s. He was born in England, grew up in New York, and lived in Canada from the 1950s on. Even when I first did an extensive tree of this side of my family, I couldn't find him. Why? - because all his cousins called him "Dickie", from his middle name! I had been looking for a "Dick Zukerman" or "Richard Zukerman".
In 2009, I was sent an old letter written by someone in the family in which he is named George. Within 5 minutes, I had found him. He was a famous bassoonist! For forty years he traveled the world as a solo bassoonist. (His older brother Joe shortened the surname to Kerman and was a famous musicologist who spent his career on the UC-Berkeley campus.) I met George for the first time at the Vancouver Winter Olympics in 2010 - another cousin in this family, Ben Agosto, was on the U.S. figure skating team. And so I found out that he had played in the Vancouver Symphony. So I asked him whether he might have been in the symphony when I sang there in 1964. He first denied being there but then I looked at the program I had kept, and his name was there, and then he let on that he was there. We have since become good friends.
He has lived a very interesting life and has a website with a name that you with your Martian-lieder joke will almost certainly enjoy: <https://www.bassoonasyouareready.ca/>.
Now I, too, have to go back to work!
Zal
Three days passed. Then, in the morning of February 6th, I received a response from Dave. It began with a huge surprise.
Dear Zal,
OMG ! ! !
1) I play the oboe and English horn professionally so OF COURSE I have heard of George Zukerman! In fact, I have been a member of the International Double Reed Society as long as I've been a member of NCTM. His work on the bassoon and music management in Canada is famous, famous, famous.
Somewhere in the recesses of my LP boxes in my storage bin I think I have George Zukerman's quintessential recording of K .191 and Weber pieces which he did in the mid-1960s with Jörg Faerber and the Württemberg Chamber Orchestra. It was on the Turnabout label.
2) I had NO idea he was the brother of the music critic, Joseph Kerman! I've been meaning to read his last books on the concerto, opera and Kunst der Fuge. Now I really have to make that effort.
3) Your recollection of Munch's lukewarm Poulenc was probably on the mark. Poulenc was reported to have said that the BSO premiere with Munch wasn't as good as the final rehearsal.
4) I love your performance of "Прощай, світе, прощай, земле" There is a typo on the page, though -- the composer is "Silvestrov" (Сильвестров).
5) Don't forget to add your NCTM-LA talk on September 29, "Circling Through a Century of NCTM: A Celebration Sprinkled with Music."
Sorry for such a delay in my responses -- it was a busy weekend in math and music, beginning with the MMC Workshop Conference this past Saturday. I look forward to discovering MUCH MUCH MORE on your webpage -- and I haven't even looked beyond the "MUSIC" tab yet!
with aloha
dave
I thought: How many connections do Dave and I have? I corrected the error in the website and in the early afternoon, I responded.
Dear Dave:
My goodness!! Still another WOW!!
I have sent this thread to George along with a copy of the letter you enclosed with the package you sent me and an explanation of how you and I know each other. George is a great correspondent so unless he is not well I should get a response.
I have seen George twice since that meeting in 2009. First was at a large family reunion in Chicago in 2010. One event in this 3-day event was a concert of professional musicians all from our family, organized by my daughter Laura, a cellist. George was invited to play and agreed but said he could not bring his own bassoon because he was going from Chicago to Europe and he didn't want to carry a bassoon along with him for the trip - and if we got him a bassoon it had to be from a member of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. So we got him a bassoon. He noted that the bassoon was quite a bit more modern than his bassoon - more stops or whatever they are called - but he played, and he played marvelously. He was 83 at the time.
And then in 2015 we went on a musical cruise down the Danube River that George had set up with a travel agent in Vancouver. About 100 passengers filling up the boat, all but 5 knowing him from his Canada (my wife Karen and me and 3 of George's cousins on the other side from New York). There was a concert either on the ship or outside every day. Before each concert, George would give a lecture telling stories related to the concert. He is a great story-teller.
A true legend.
Will you be at NCTM in Washington in October? If so, we must get together!! (Added later: Of course he will be there; a week later I learned that he is running for the office of President of NCTM!)
Zal
Later in the afternoon, I was examining files of talks I had given in the past 30 years, and I came across a file of the 1994 NCTM annual meeting.. In it was a handout from a talk that Dave had given. The title of his talk: Geometric Symmetry in the Music of the Classical Era". Among the many sessions offered simutaneously, there was an obvious reason I attended this talk. Symmetry is a major concept in my geometry curriculum work that was not found in most other geometry texts of the time. If I had remembered Dave's talk, I would not have been surprised that Dave was into music.
When I next examined my e-mail a few hours later, there was this e-mail from Dave.
Unfortunately, I'm so sorry to inform you that George Zukerman just passed away at the end of January after a short illness. Julia Lockhart of the Vancouver Symphony did a really great interview with him three years ago, and it is reprinted here:
https://councilofcanadianbassoonists.ca/project/conversation-with-george-zukerman-and-julia-lockhart/
With heartfelt condolences,
dave
Twelve minutes later I learned the same from Peter Kerman, Joe Kerman's son. George had died on February 1st, the same day that I received the package from David Masunaga. He died peacefully at his home outside Vancouver, having lived a full and wonderful life, as both Dave and I can attest.
This story was uploaded on February 22, 2023, on what would have been George's 96th birthday.