The day after I turned 16 I got a job at Bethesda hospital at Western and Howard.
I would get there at 6:00AM and fill the food trays with whatever the requirements were like salt pepper silverware napkins etc. At 8:00 I would take the bus to Sullivan High school to start my day. After school on most days, I would return to the hospital to wash out the glass tubes they used for blood tests in those days. If I finished early the girls in the lab would teach me a little about blood counts and EKG’s.
It was apparent I could not go away to school like my friends and cousins because there was no money for that & higher education wasn’t especially encouraged. I met your Dad, the love of my life at my Aunt Addi’s whose house I went to visit. I am pretty sure it f it was not “love at first sight, there was a strong connection there, which over a 6 year period developed and by the time were were married we loved & knew each other very well.
After Highschool I started Amundsen Jr. college while & I got a job at Colonial insurance company. after a couple of years I was impatient and wanted to “start my future”. My friend Shelly worked for a dentist downtown at 30 N. Michigan. I applied for a job and was hired to learn to be an assistant. One of the doctors was a periodontist, a very new kind of dentistry! After a while I changed offices and started working for Dr. Bendersky, who had a great office but not too many patients . There I met Dr, Ira Fleishman who came in once a week as endodontist and Dr. Alan Kaplan who was an orthodontist. Ira and I immediately hit it off and are still friendly to this day. Dr. Bendersky was waiting for a city contract that would give him a certain amount of money for every hotel worker in the city whether thy came or not. In the meantime he couldn’t pay his bills. Once when he was out of town they were going to shut off the phone, so Ira Fleishman & I paid the bill! I became the office manager and Dr. Bendersky became a multi millionaire. We had fun in the office. It was never overwhelming busy and there was a lot of downtime. I was more serious with Your Dad, who came up to the office when he was home from school. Dad Ira and I became friendly and laughed a lot. Eventually Ginger, Miles future sister-in-law & I decided to develop a friendship. We were and are very different people who never would have connected but we agreed to become “friends” and we did! We raised our children together and continues to support eachother, we don’t get involved in the “small stuff”, no judgements!
David was in the reserves and Ginger was a bacteriologist at North Western Hospital and on many Fridays, while we waited for Miles and David to get home Ginger would come to my office. I remember doing each others hair and girlie things. It was fun!
