As part of One Book, One Chicago, we're featuring a series of original essays titled Chicago Heroes: Real & Imagined! Each month through spring 2015, meet a local hero as introduced by a local author. Chicago authors will reflect on heroes from the past, present or even imagined in these new short essays. This month's essay is from Elizabeth Berg.
Elizabeth Berg is the author of many bestselling novels as well as two works of nonfiction. Open House was an Oprah’s Book Club selection, Durable Goods and Joy School were selected as ALA Best Books of the Year, and Talk Before Sleep was short-listed for an Abby Award. Her bestsellers also include The Year of Pleasures, The Day I Ate Whatever I Wanted and Dream When You’re Feeling Blue. Berg has been honored by the Chicago Public Library and Boston Public Library and is a popular speaker at various venues around the country. She is based in the Chicago area and is a fan and supporter of the Chicago Public Library!
Hero Is As Hero Does
By Elizabeth Berg
Picture a 10-year-old boy lying in the dark on a narrow bed in a basement in the tiny Chicago suburb of Berkeley. The boy has claimed the basement for a bedroom so that he can have some privacy: he has five siblings, and the modest house has only three small bedrooms. The boy is happy down there in his corner space cordoned off by a bookcase and a dresser; happy with his record player and television that he bought with his own money from his two paper routes.
The boy has a preternatural awareness of and interest in the larger world; young as he is, he wants to be a vital part of it. So he lies on his bed and dreams. He’s a big dreamer.
At 7 years old, he dreamed of having the Winter Olympics in his backyard. He figured a skating rink could be made by using the hose to run water into a circumscribed space. The skiers could use the roof of the garage to do their jumps; they would just have to avoid the apple tree. If the Queen of England came (this is something the boy thought could very well happen), she would be invited for a family dinner, and the littlest kids would be excluded from the table to avoid any embarrassment—milk up the nose, and so on. The only thing the boy worried about was logistics: where would everyone park?
Now the boy dreams of opening an underground (literally and figuratively) gambling club, which he intends to call The Royal Casino. In preparation, he has matchbooks made up with Diamond Bill, his moniker as club owner, embossed in gold on the red covers. Among the gambling paraphernalia he has purchased from Marshall Field’s are a briefcase full of chips, felt layouts for card and dice games, and a roulette wheel. All that’s left is to start digging under the garage.
The boy has figured out that one of the necessary components for leading a rich and interesting life is money. His paper routes give him the power to buy what he wants without having to seek permission from anyone. But they do more than that, because the boy reads the papers, and that ignites his imagination. What a city lies beyond the streets he rides his bike down in order to deliver those papers! He wants to see it. He has to. And so, as often as he can and unbeknownst to his parents, the boy gets onto a bus that will take him to an el stop that will take him downtown. He rides the el all over the city, looking at the views outside the window from either the back or the front car, or, sometimes, from the space between two cars. He knows every stop the train makes.
The boy loves the Loop. He loves the hotels and the movie theaters and the crowds of people. He loves knowing he is in the place that has the Pump Room and Mr. Kelly’s and London House. He doesn’t go to Mr. Kelly’s quite yet: he goes to The Treasure Chest at Randolph and State to buy magician’s tricks so that he can continue to put on backyard shows for the neighborhood kids (he prints his own tickets for the 10-cent extravaganza, and he plays to packed houses). After the Treasure Chest, he goes to Flo’s for pizza. He might also visit the drugstore at the Palmer House so that he can order up a chocolate Coke. One day he buys himself a sharkskin suit from Karoll’s Red Hanger Shop.
The boy doesn’t fit in at the school he attends. He is considered odd, difficult. What 10-year-old memorizes the entire Gettysburg Address on his own time for his own pleasure, and then lets the principal record it? These days, a boy so vibrantly different and alive might be put into a classroom for gifted students, where he might thrive. But this is then, and the boy doesn’t fit in, and also he is bored. While his teacher drones on, the boy stares out the window at the roads that lead out of there.
At 14 years of age, the boy drops out of his suburban school and transfers to the YMCA high school, downtown. The boy finds this place quite a wonderful change from his old school: for one thing, each student is offered a tin ashtray in case they would like to smoke at their desk.
Finally the boy is doing one of the things he has lain on his bed and dreamt about: he is regularly going into the city. He carries a briefcase and he rides the double-decker commuter train to school, and he studies the mannerisms of the businessmen he rides the train with. He buys himself a fedora.
Soon it is not enough, commuting to the city he loves. He wants to be there all the time. And so at 16 years old, the boy moves downtown, to Astor Street. He gets a job as a copy boy at the Sun-Times, and then, finding the workaday world much more educational than any school, he drops out of the Y school and gets his GED. His higher education comes from the world at large and from books.
He gets a job as a doorman, then as an engineer at an apartment building, a job for which he is not exactly qualified; one day he floods the second floor trying to fix a sprinkler. He works as a cab driver and a dispatcher. He writes for the Encyclopedia of World Crime. He works as a bookseller. He creates an award-winning cable TV show on baseball. Then one day someone asks if he would maybe like a job taking authors around when they come to Chicago.
The boy, now a man, does want to. Because although his interest and talents are vast and varied and his potential nearly limitless, books and reading mean everything to him. Books and reading and, if you will recall, logistics. So he has found the job of his dreams. And for nearly 30 years, he’s been serving as a kind of literary ambassador to Chicago.
If you’re someone who likes to go to author events, you most likely have seen this man, whose name is Bill Young. At 6'3” and solidly built, he is a hard guy to miss. Then again, you might not have seen him.
That’s because when Bill is in the company of the people he is working with—whether that’s a bestselling author or powerful politician or glittering celebrity or an obscure writer of literary gems—when he’s with any of them, he disappears. Unless he is needed. And then he is there, offering whatever that person might need, sometimes in advance of the time they realize they need it. Bill manages crowds that would otherwise create chaos. He knows where best to park; he knows all the doormen; he knows exactly how much time you need to get from here to there at any time of day. He understands logical sequence and priority, and he anticipates problems and solves them before they occur.
Authors love him. Here’s why: he’s utterly dependable. He’s highly intelligent but doesn’t brag about it. He shows them Chicago—he shows them what they tell him they want to see, and he shows them what they want to see but didn’t know they wanted to see until they saw it. He is a gifted conversationalist and also just plain fun. If they need quiet, he’ll give it to them; and they don’t have to tell him when they need quiet; he senses it. Finally, authors love Bill because he is discreet. It’s a rare talent, the ability to be truly discreet, but Bill has it.
With all the books he is sent by publishers, Bill always has at least 10 books on order at the library at any given time. He subscribes to four newspapers and a number of magazines. He believes in reading; it is very nearly his religion. He knows what reading can do, and what the lack of it can cause. He is also a very good writer, but he has chosen to dedicate his life to helping other authors shine. He stays in the background, largely unseen.
So where does the idea of hero enter here?
My definition of a hero is not someone who does a one-time, heroic act. Rather, it is someone who consistently puts himself second to his ideals. It’s someone who spends a great deal of time and energy in service to others. That’s what Bill does. He’s also someone whose gratitude for the life he lives is demonstrated on a daily basis, and he does not need to measure himself against another to calibrate his own self-worth. He’s a man who, since he was a wildly imaginative young boy, has made himself happy, and he keeps himself that way. That’s hero enough for me.
As for serving as host of the Winter Olympics? I really wouldn’t count him out.
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