Different Slants

Robert M. Katzman’s Amazing Story:  http://www.differentslants.com/?p=355

© April 18, 2013

I used to write on another blog about Hyde Park, a southern part of Chicago six or so miles from the Downtown area, a diverse intellectual community containing many things but most famously the University of Chicago, its experimental K through 12 school, the Laboratory School and the Museum of Science and Technology.

Sometimes I responded to what another person wrote and sometimes that response was reprinted here, because it expressed reflections that might mean something to a larger group of whomever my readers are. How can I know you? Facebook is, illogically, faceless. So, Strangers, see if what I wrote matters to you, possibly in some other context.

There was a significant political person named Marshall Korshak, forgotten today, who was a Chicago Democratic Party powerbroker there in the ’50’s,’60’s and ’70’s. Not everyone loved him. I responded to that expressed feeling in his defense. Marshall, born in 1911, died at 85, in 1996. This is what I wrote about him:

I was reading this thread until I read the part about Marshall Korshak and some not so complimentary remarks about him. Everyone is entitled to their opinion. Me, too. But my relationship with him couldn’t have been more unbalanced.

He was the single most powerful politician I encountered when I was in HP after opening the newsstand, besides 4th Ward Ald. Claude W. B.Holman (1904-1973) which isn’t for here, now.

After I bought and rebuilt the newsstand at 53rd and Lake Park in 1970, I was being threatened from different directions (as usual) because of the very strange triangular shape of the structure and that I wanted electricity in there for light and heat–unheard of for a corner newsstand. We were serfs, after all, meant to suffer. Too many hands stretched out to pay off and too many street inspector threats for me to deal with, I went to him for protection. All we had in common was Passover.

He was a rich and important man, or so I was told. Normally in Hyde Park, protection, depending on the situation and personality, had a price tag. Marshall agreed to see me after someone who knew both of us asked him to do that. An intermediate politician: Don’t send nobody that nobody sent.

Whatever I expected, I didn’t dress for the occasion and was as direct with him as I was with the (then) animalistic newspaper truck drivers, except I was more polite with my language.

He decided he wanted to know more about me, where I was from, where I went to school, what synagogue, what were my plans, did I have a girl, was my family from the old, rough, immigrant West Side…and this went on for a while. I didn’t ask him any questions besides the first one. We were not in parallel universes, from my perspective.

Except it turned out we were, from HIS perspective, because he told me I reminded him of himself when he was a kid and a real hustler trying to make something of himself. I did not see any reason to argue with his point of view. Who knew where this would go?

When he was done verifying my religious, Chicago and Eastern European roots, and that I was a Democrat–maybe not in that order–he told not to worry about anything, anymore. Anyone gives me trouble, refer them to him. We shook hands. He wished me luck. Not one cent ever passed between us, unless he bought a newspaper from me and he wouldn’t take a free one, ever.

Maybe a guardian angel, for a while, but I think he really did see himself in me, very nostalgically, and he wasn’t, in effect, going to shake himself down. He made a major difference in my vulnerable, insecure sort of life. I was and am grateful to him.

Whatever any of the people who read this story thought of him in the bigger picture, I believe fairness requires that you know how he treated someone powerless who needed him, and how he responded. Just because a man or woman is dead, doesn’t mean their reputation shouldn’t be defended as long as there is someone still alive who once knew them and is able to do that. Today, I am that small voice, but a long time ago, Marshall Korshak heard it.

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