Editor’s Note: Nightlife Editor Sam Wagmeister’s planned column for this month will be published at a later date. He sat down to compose the column on Father’s Day. Sitting at his computer, thoughts of his dad came flooding back. Here, he shares those thoughts.
I was almost eleven years old the night my dad died suddenly. I hardly had time to get to know him.
He was a dentist with offices in downtown Peoria and East Peoria (Il). The East Peoria office was across the bridge from the Caterpillar Tractor factory, above a Buster Brown shoe store.
I’d go down to the office and play on the shoe store’s fluoroscope machine before its dangers were known. Dad’s office served a racially and economically divided community.
I got my first dog from one of my dad’s East Peoria patients. A roly-poly woman carrying a wicker basket hobbled up the stairs to his office one day in 1956.
“Dr. Wags,” she said, “I owe you $5.00. I try and try but I just can’t come up with the money. Last week, my dog had puppies. Would you take one of the puppies for the $5.00?”
I had Woofie for the next 18 years, 12 years longer than I had my dad.
As a 10-year old, I saw death every week on Saturday morning cowboy shows. The same guys died week after week; I knew that dead guys come back next Saturday. It took years for me to comprehend that my dad wasn’t coming back next Saturday.
My cousin Steve Wagmeister and I recently exchanged text message memories. Steve reminisced: “(Your dad) received an emergency call from a wife in a poor section of town. Her husband was in a lot of pain. He drove to their house and took care of the guy.
“They thanked Dr. Wag and handed him $1.00, that’s all they had. Your father looked at the dollar and said, ‘I’m sorry I don’t have change for that’ and he wouldn’t accept the money.”
Shown is the last photo that I have of my dad, taken at Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry. That’s Steve in the passenger seat and me behind the wheel.
