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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 He survived 95% of his friends and his longevity superseded every other member of his family by decades.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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The Village Once Called Tessville – Lincolnwood, Illinois Part 2

In my first Lincolnwood blog, I was determined to feature businesses for which I could find images, with a few exceptions. There were also some I didn’t mention – either because they bit the dust too recently or I forgot about them. I tried to focus primarily on Lincolnwood in the first article, although I included Hollywood Kiddieland, Lincoln Village, and a few business in West Rogers Park and Edgebrook. For this blog, I expanded my scope and included additional businesses in areas of Chicago and Skokie close to Lincolnwood. I will devote an entire blog to Skokie in the near future, due to the availability of a vast number of images and more abundant information. There will also be a third part dedicated to defunct discount and department stores due to the fact this article got a little too long! In any case, when you are writing about a topic both subjective and near and dear to so many people, there are bound to be a few oversights. Thank you to everyone who responded enthusiastically to the first article … your invaluable suggestions helped me identify oversights and inspired part 2, which I present here! This blog is dedicated to all the former Lincolnwood residents who passed away, including two guys I grew up with – Mitch Tarczynski and Ian Goldman, who I only found out about recently as a result of writing the first Lincolnwood article. A special shout out to the late Leroy Kaplan, whose daughter Roberta commented on the first article. In 1974, Leroy and Elaine founded Lincolnwood Girls Softball with Fred Hosfield. Elaine Kaplan, who was very sweet, owned Gift Motique (on Touhy east of Crawford) with her sister. Leroy supervised the Lincolnwood Girls Softball Umpires – he was a character with a heart of gold.   Restaurants & Bars   The top photo shows the…

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Lincolnwood, Illinois – A Trip Down Memory Lane

In 1959, my parents moved from Rogers Park to Lincolnwood, a quiet Chicago suburb with a current population of about 12,697 people. My dad broke the mold of all his physician friends, many of whom moved from Hyde Park or South Shore to North Shore suburbs such as Wilmette, Winnetka, Glencoe, and Highland Park. They all thought he was a little nuts for choosing this somewhat obscure, unassuming village. However, he had the last laugh because Lincolnwood is an easy commute to North Michigan Avenue, where nearly all of them practiced and my dad has since 1958 – and still does part-time at age 93! My dad could have bought a house in the Lincolnwood Towers, famous for its extravagant Christmas decorations. Back in 1959, there were very few if any Jewish families living in the Towers, so instead he opted for a house in the Lincolnwood Terrace section just east of the Towers. My dad loves recounting the story of live reindeer with a manned sleigh that graced one homeowner’s front lawn when they first moved to Lincolnwood! Actress Barbara Eden looked at a house in the Towers at North Shore and Navajo when she married Charles Fegert, a Chicago Sun-Times advertising executive, but they ended up living in Water Tower Place (1977-1983). Lincolnwood is just a stone’s throw away from Chicago – Sauganash and Edgebrook are the lovely communities closest to where I grew up, near Pratt and Cicero. When I went to college on the East Coast, nobody heard of Lincolnwood, however, when I mentioned Skokie and Evanston, that elicited a glimmer of recognition. I wrote before about Lincoln Village, which was just over the border in Chicago on Lincoln Avenue between Kimball and Kedzie and the adjacent Hollywood Kiddieland. I discuss both beloved places later in this blog. A Short History Incorporated as Tessville…

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