Tribute to My Dad: The Way We Were in the Windy City
My Brooklyn-born dad Samuel Weiss was a New Yorker at heart, but he loved Lincolnwood and the Windy City. My dad marched to his own drummer and was a complex, incredibly interesting man with tastes that ran the gamut from high-brow to humble, intellectually superior to silly. When I was little, my dad owned a red 356 Porsche convertible, followed by a white 356. At age 97, he was mentoring an analyst in training, still treating a handful of longtime patients, and was a guest teacher for a class at the Chicago Psychoanalytic Institute – truly an amazing man! My dad had his nose rebuilt after a particularly bad episode of basal cell cancer in 1981, survived colon cancer in 1988, and more recently lost his eyesight due to age-related macular degeneration. Nevertheless, he was a vital lover of life until the very end when COVID-19 cruelly struck him down, despite taking extra precautions. His indomitable spirit is a lesson I need to heed as I deal with my own health issues. He survived 95% of his friends and his longevity superseded every other member of his family by decades. My dad was unbelievably generous to friends and family and supported countless charitable causes. But he wasn’t a saint – he had a hair-trigger temper that made me fear him when I was a child and was outspoken to the point of being caustic, at times. Thankfully, he mellowed a great deal with age, just like the wine he loved! I’m the family historian and am dedicated to telling his stories through words and photographs. As my 33-year-old daughter and his namesake Samantha said, “It’s unbelievably amazing how many important events my grandma and grandpa lived through and it’s important to tell their story.” During the pandemic when my…
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