Remembering Ed, thoughts I shared with Mary Fran Felsenthal Schroeder, Ed's daughter.
Edward George Felsenthal III and I attended Leo High School together between 1955 and 1969. We were not social friends in high school. He was from Christ the King parish in the Beverly Hills neighborhood and I was from St. Leo parish in Englewood. In our senior year at Leo, each of us took and passed the NROTC qualification exam and physical exam and each of us chose Marquette as our college. In our freshman year, we each lived in Schroeder Hall at 725 N. 13th Street, Ed on the 7th floor, I on the 5th. It was in Schroeder Hall that we became good friends and decided to become roommates off campus the following year.
We lived together as roommates from September 1960, until June 1963. For three semesters, we lived in the lower flat of a duplex at 17th Street and Juneau Avenue owned by Mr. and Mrs. Val Cordes, who lived in their smaller house on the same lot, behind the duplex. For one semester, we lived at the Queen Anne Apartments on 29th Street, just north of Wisconsin Avenue. In our senior year, we lived in a duplex at 25th and Vine Streets. It was just the two of us in Queen Anne, but in our other residences, we lived with NROTC colleagues Tom Devitt from Elgin, Illinois, Jerry Nugent from Waukegan, and Bill Hendricks whose hometown I can't remember now. The only non-NROTC roommate was my former Schroeder Hall roommate Joe Daley, whose family owned a dairy farm outside Columbus, Wisconsin. Joe lived with us for 3 semesters on 17th Street. He and Ed had very different chemistries and he was the reason Ed decided to move to the Queen Anne Apartments on 29th Street and I left with him.
The five of us in the NROTC all had short, military haircuts that revealed old scars or notches, on our scalps. Ed took to calling our apartment "Notch House," which became the sobriquet for the house on 17th Street and for our group of roomies. The name has stuck for 64 years. It came to include our significant others: Veronica "Ronnie" Colby, a Milwaukee native, for Tom; Paula Bocchichio from New Jersey for Bill; and Anne Smith from suburban Cleveland, for me. Jerry Nugent's SO, Phyllis, and Ed's SO, Helen Jansen, attended college elsewhere and missed the "Notch House" experience. The group also included Anne's Marquette roommate at Alumni House and Lisette Lodge, Cam Wakeman from suburban Detroit, who became as much a 'Notchie" as any of us and became Ed's dear friend later in life her daughter Gretchen lived in Naples, Florida, and Ed lived on Marco Island.
In a sense, Ed and I grew up together. In those years we shared at Marquette and in the Navy ROTC, we moved from adolescence to manhood, from teenagers to commissioned officers in the Navy and Marine Corps, and from young bachelors to married men. It was a significant time of life for both of us and I daresay that in sharing so much of it, we influenced each other. It was Ed who introduced me to Anne, my former wife, mother of my children, and still my friend. Further proof that Ed influenced me was that, under his tutelage and encouragement, I became (at least temporarily) a Republican and a Goldwater voter in 1964. I got over that part of Ed's influence after serving in Vietnam in 1965 and 1966, where Ed also served, me at the air station, he at a naval facility. Each of us was affected by our service in Vietnam and each of us came to be regulars at our local Veterans Administration medical centers later in life. Each of us lost at least one common friend from the Marquette NROTC in the war, Jay Trembley, a bombardier/navigator on a Navy A-6 Intruder aircraft shot down over China on a mission in North Vietnam. But I focus my thoughts now on our time as roommates when we were young and growing together out of adolescence and into adulthood and I limit myself to only a few of so many memories.
On arriving at Marquette in 1959, we first reported to the NROTC Unit on campus where we were sworn into the Navy Reserve as midshipmen, the same rank as students at the Naval Academy at Annapolis. For the next 4 years, we were "under orders," as it were, attending Naval Science classes 3 days every week, attending drill sessions on a 4th day, when we wore our uniforms on campus, and spending each summer on active duty. We were on full-tuition scholarships, plus receiving books, uniforms, and a $50 per month subsistence allowance.
Our summer active duty service brought us into contact with history. In the summer of 1960, we served in Task Group Alpha, Ed on an aircraft carrier, USS RANDOLF, CV 15, and I on a destroyer, USS CONY, DDE 508. The main mission of the task group was anti-submarine warfare but in April 1961 both ships were on station off Cuba for the infamous Bay of Pigs invasion. In 1962, they participated in the Cuban Missile Crisis and forced nuclear-armed Soviet submarines to surface.
Active duty during the summer of 1961 was an adventure. We were to spend the first half of active duty at the Navy's Amphibious Base in Little Creek, VA, with instruction from Marines and members of 'the Gator Navy,' as the Navy's amphibious component was called. The second half was spent in aviation training at Naval Air Station, Corpus Christi, TX, to which we were airlifted from Little Creek. This presented a challenge since Ed and I planned to drive to Little Creek from our homes in Chicago and, when the active duty was completed, to drive home via Acadia National Park in Maine and Mount Katahdin in which Ed had an interest which I can no longer recall. The challenge was that we would be in Texas when released from active duty, and Ed's car, a 49 or maybe 51 Ford, would be in Virginia. Not a problem, said Ed, we can hitchhike the 1600 miles and so we did. The idea was Ed's, not mine. He was more adventurous than I was, ever ready to take on life while I was more cautious, but we were life partners at the time and where he led, I followed (except for leaving the Navy and joining the Marines.)
There was one challenge we hadn't counted on: the summer of 1961 was the first "Freedom Summer" in which "Freedom Riders" from the North traveled through the Deep South registering Blacks to vote. Freedom Riders were, to put it gently, not welcomed by most White Southerners. When a driver stopped to offer us a ride and we said "Thank you, sir" with a Yankee accent, we were asked more than once: "You boys aren't Freedom Riders, are you?" Our white-walled, military haircuts and seabags corroborated our assurances that we were in the Navy, just trying to get back to our last duty station.
Some memories from that adventure:
Except for one night in Hattiesburg, MS, we hitchhiked day and night, alternating 'thumbing.' One of us would stand on the side of a road with thumb out while the other slept as best he could on the shoulder of the road, using our seabags as a pillow.
We hitched through Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and finally Virginia.
We were picked up outside of Hattiesburg, MS, by an older gentleman who drove us to a decent motel where we could shower and sleep in a bed. Hattiesburg was in a "dry" county and our benefactor even offered to go to his private club and get us a bottle of whiskey for which we of course thanked him profusely, to which he replied: "That's all right, boys, we'd do this for anyone, 'ceptin' n- - - - - s, of course." The memory of the man's kindness and the competing memory of that comment stayed with us throughout our lives.
Another driver, in one of the Carolinas, gave us a full bottle of genuine moonshine, white lightning, which we kept and brought back to Notch House. We slipped a shot of it into the drink of one of our roommates who occasionally got a little obstreperous and refused to go to bed after too much to drink, thankfully not a common occurrence.
Ed's car was a post-WWII era Ford. It was old and decrepit. In fact, it had a sizable hole in the floor in front of the passenger seat which we kept covered with a pie tin. Take away the pie tin and watch the road zip by under our feet. The car functioned well until we got into the Adirondack Mountains where we discovered that it didn't have enough engine power to cruise uphill at speed. The higher it got, the more it slowed down. We learned to floor the gas pedal on downslopes in order to maximize our speed heading onto upslopes, hoping we woudn't incur the wrath of drivers behind us as we (slowly) approached the crest of the hill or mountain road.
An aside: When I returned from our freshman active duty on the Atlantic, my steady girlfriend and First True Love of 2 years plus, Charlene, dumped me. It broke my heart and led to a long-lasting depression. She and I had fantasized that when we finished college, we would live in Berlin, New Hampshire, below the Canadian border between the White Mountain range and the Green Mountain range. The idea came while browsing some atlas. Ed and I made a point of driving making a side trip through Berlin on our way home from Maine and discovered it is (or was 64 years ago) a depressed and depressing old New England mill town, nowhere young lovers would want to settle in. The experience drove home to me the impermanence of some relationships, Charlene and me for 2 years, and the unusual permanence of others, Ed and me for 65 years. I need to add that the semester Ed and I lived at the Queen Anne, I was still very depressed over being dumped by Charlene to the degree that Ed was worried about me, but he chose to live with me and help me through my long heartache.
It was during the summer active duty at Little Creek and Corpus Christi that I decided to take my commission in the Marine Corps and Ed opted to take his in the Navy so the following summer we went our separate ways, he to shipboard duty on the Atlantic and me to the big Marine base at Quantico, Virginia. On Ed's 22nd birthday, June 2, 1963, we graduated from Marquette and he was commissioned an ensign in the Navy and I a 2nd lieutenant in the Marines and we set off on our separate paths but not before I served as one of his groomsmen at his marriage to your Mom at Christ the King parish on June 8th and he served as best man at my marriage to Anne in suburban Cleveland on June 15th. We wouldn't see each other again for almost a year until Anne and I were able to visit him and your Mom at his first duty station in Pensacola, Florida, on our way to my first permanent duty in Yuma, Arizona.
It was Ed who introduced me to Anne when they were both enrolled in Marquette's Journalism School before Ed switched his major to Political Science in the Liberal Arts College. I think of how fitting it seems that it was Ed who brought Anne and me together because, for the Notch House crowd, Ed was the "Social Chairman," the organizer and catalyst of friendships and relationships. In our NROTC unit, the social organization of the midshipman battalion was The Anchor and Chain Society and in our senior year, I was its president and Ed was literally our Social Chairman, organizer of smokers, parties, Homecoming float construction, and the annual Navy Ball. He remained Social Chairman of the Notch House crowd throughout the many decades that followed our graduation from Marquette organizing a reunion in Chicago one year and another on Marco Island later and almost always the one to initiate telephone calls. I always had a standing invitation to visit him in Palos and on Marco and I wish now I had more often taken advantage of that kind invitation, so typical of his generosity.
Some memories of our last year at Marquette. Ed and I and Bill Hendricks took jobs stuffing newspaper boxes at bus stops with Milwaukee Sentinel newspapers six nights a week. It was a hard job, at least in the then-colder Milwaukee winters. We lived at 25th and Vine Streets and got out of bed around 1 in the morning to pick up our trucks at the Sentinel garage, gather our newspapers, service all the bus stops on our routes, return with the day-old papers we had replaced, and the quarters we had harvested from the coin boxes to the Sentinel office to drop off the coins and to the garage to drop off our trucks. Then we would trudge home to try to get some sleep before starting our regular classes at Marquette. I mention this because it shows what I'm sure you already know: what a hard worker your Dad was, even in college, and also how self-reliant he was. I daresay he did not have to take that so disrupted every night and every day, but he wanted to support himself on his earnings and his $50 a month Navy subsistence allowance and he did.
Another treasured memory from our last year living together, one that seems a bit silly now but I share it for whatever interest it may have. At Marquette in the 1960s, Catholic students were required to make an annual religious retreat. In our senior year, both Ed and I decided, for reasons I can no longer recall, that we shouldn't be forced to make the retreat. (Perhaps I was still mad at God for letting Charlene dump me after my time on active duty in 1960, but I'm sure Ed's reason was more rational!) In any event, the Dean of Students called us into his office and threatened to keep us from graduating at the end of the year if we didn't make that required retreat. That caused us to dig our heels in even deeper because, after all, "it's a matter of principle!" The complicating factor was that the Navy Department had a vested interest in our graduation and our readiness to serve at least 4 years on active duty after graduation and commissioning. Ed and I ended up the rope in a tug of war between the Dean of Students and the commanding officer of the NROTC Unit. Eventually, we and the Navy Department prevailed and, as it is said, 'the rest is history.' I'm not sure what this conflict reveals about Ed and me, perhaps simple foolishness or the inability to distinguish mountains from molehills, I'm not sure. But I remember it was a serious concern at the time, for Ed and me, for the Navy (and Marine Corps), and for the university administration. Perhaps it showed we were independent thinkers in matters of religion and other important matters, not easily led by the wishes of authority figures or by mere social expectations, customs, or conventions. In any case, it was certainly true of Ed that he was, even as a young man, a man of strong convictions and strong will. He was highly intelligent and he used his intelligence to inform himself of the things responsible people should be informed about. Once he was informed enough to form an intelligent belief, he acted in accordance with that belief, i.e., he was determined, strong-willed, and self-directed, a man of principles.
I hesitate to tax your patience with more memories of an old man reflecting on the loss of a lifetime friend, but I should mention a matter on which Ed helped me late in life, in our mid-70s. For years, he urged me to enroll in the Veterans Administration health program and for years resisted, as much out of indolence as anything else. He kept assuring me that the benefits were worthwhile and eventually I tried to enroll but failed because of a mistake at my local Veterans Affairs office. Nonetheless, Ed kept encouraging me and when he found out that a good friend of one of his grandsons was interning at a Veterans legal clinic at his law school in Chicago, Ed got that law student and me together to pursue my enrollment. The clinic took my case, broke through a lot of bureaucratic red tape, and got me enrolled. Since then all my medical and disability needs have been handled by the VA, all to my great benefit. I owe all those many benefits to Ed who, even in our old age, was the catalyst for getting me together with a law student intern in Chicago who could solve a problem that had stymied me for a couple of years. I mention it because it shows not only what a caring friend he always has been, but also how he never gave up on working to help me, how dedicated and persistent his caring was. I know that that is the kind of man he was, one of long-lasting, persistent, indeed unending loyalties, to his wife, his daughters, his grandchildren, his great-grandchildren, to his friends, and for the last 65 years, to me. I loved your Dad and I know your Dad loved me, for which I am ever grateful.
