7 How They Turned Out
One of the many blessings of such a stable childhood is that I’m able now, after a lifetime, to look at how these people turned out. Neillsville was especially interesting because many – perhaps most – of the kids I knew remained in the area, mostly to work full-time after graduation, or otherwise to attend college or trade school, often in Eau Claire (the most popular destination) or another University of Wisconsin school such as Madison or Stevens Point. A few kids joined the military.
At graduation, I observed that something like 10% of the students were married or pregnant – a figure that counts the boys, which by biological implication means closer to 20% of the girls. Even of the girls who weren’t yet pregnant, most would be within a few years. Those children are themselves now all grown up and many with children of their own, easily making many grandparents (and a few great-grandparents) today out of my classmates.
7.1 Jimbo
Jimbo’s choice surprised me: he signed up for college at Illinois Wesleyan, the same school he’d attended the previous summer. But he also signed up for the Army Reserve, curiously, as a way to pay for college, in spite of his parents’ obvious ability to pay. By that point, he was closer to Tracy Thompson than he was to me, so perhaps it was partly from some influence from Tracy, who also signed up for the Reserves. Maybe Jimbo felt he wanted to be in better shape? Or to prove his independence from his parents? To challenge himself generally? I’m not sure, but anyway the two shipped out together early in the summer and I wouldn’t see either of them again for years.
We were in touch, to be sure – he wrote me letters from the army, and I responded diligently. There were occasional letters exchanged during college as well, where I learned that he had become a history major. He spent time in Washington DC on an internship where he enjoyed regular sightings of and introductions to various famous political people. His best friend in college was a guy named Rick Linneman, from whom he picked up some bad youthful habits: drinking, marijuana, but all in a socially-acceptable way, of course. Ultimately Jimbo found a nice Catholic girl who he married soon after graduation. They moved to Chicago for work near her family.
I met Jimbo and his wife at their house in the Chicago suburbs a few years later. She was, of course, very attractive, but something about the relationship didn’t seem right; she was just a little colder than I would have expected, just a bit less interested in his past life than, I guess, I would be in my own spouse. Or maybe she was just being polite, to let Jimbo catch up in private with an old friend.
Tracy lived not far away, and for a while it was just the three of us guys from Neillsville, exchanging old memories and filling in the blanks. I learned for the first time how much of the Neillsville world I had missed: the sexual exploits of Jimbo with a girl from our church, of Tracy with a popular girl from class, and many others. There were stories, too, of the lawyer who lived down the street from us, by all accounts a pillar of the community and very respectable, who after an ugly divorce took a shotgun into one of the historic homes – the Todd Mansion in a nice downtown part of Neillsville – and shot the place up.
Sadly, within a year or two Jimbo and his wife were divorced. He told me later that their marriage was always on pins and needles. She constantly accused him of adultery, despite – he confided honestly – that he had absolutely never considered the slightest fling outside marriage. Apparently her accusations were self-projections because later he learned that she had an affair. The marriage blew up soon after, and she was gone.
Jimbo moved to downtown Chicago, in a very nice apartment at the heart of the city, and later married again, to a Moroccan woman, but that marriage didn’t last either. Sometime after that he found another wife yet again, in middle age, a friend’s friend, but again, they split up after a year or two.
We stayed in touch over the years, talking by phone occasionally, often when he was especially excited about something. I remember early in the 2000s he called regularly with investment advice, having discovered day trading. He moved in with his parents as they got older, and he proudly told me about how well he cooked for them.
One time he called me in a panic, begging me to help him escape from somebody at college who was trying to kill him. It sounded ridiculous to me, but he insisted that these people held long grudges and they were not going to forget. Jimbo smoked marijuana a lot — it was an uncomfortable part of him whenever I saw him in person — so I assumed that these paranoid calls were caused somehow by some psychoactive substance and I just ignored him.
It took a couple of decades for the truth to emerge that he was suffering from paranoid schizophrenia. Sometimes the attacks were serious enough that he would be involuntarily confined under the State of Wisconsin rules for handling people with serious mental problems. This typically only angered him further, until the mid-2010s when he ended up homeless and on the streets. The last time I saw him in person was at a homeless shelter in Eau Claire where between his happy reminiscences of our childhood, he would break in and out of angry paranoid outbursts that left me shaken and wondering where my old friend had gone.
We had a brief Facebook exchange in the late summer of 2016, when he explained he was at a public library preparing to write me a long email. It never arrived.
Much later, out of the blue in early 2023 he messaged me again and at last we were able to speak. He lives alone in a comfortable private apartment in Thief River Falls, in northwest Minnesota. Having been diagnosed with severe bipolar disorder, he now lives on on SSDI (disability) and medicaid, so his basic needs are provided for. Surviving on a regimen of miscellaneous anti-psychotic drugs, his personality – and life – is much more stable and he’s able to enjoy a modicum of normalcy after more than five years on the streets.
Jimbo’s older brothers did better. Ed ran a wildly successful evangelical church in Marshfield for many years, building it from nothing to something like over 1,000 attendees each Sunday. It came crashing down when Ed ran off with the babysitter, throwing it all away for I guess a week or so of passion. He eventually came back to the wife (and kids) and settled into a sales type job someplace for a while, or so I heard, until he got back into the ministry, carefully re-building his career until he joined an offshoot of the Episcopal Church, where he is now a Bishop. His son, Michael, became a Grammy-nominated Gospel musician famous enough to have his own Wikipedia page only to renounce his evangelical faith and become one of the “emergents”, one of those ultra-moderns to whom every form of spirituality is equal.
Jimbo’s other brother, Mark, remained true to his wife, Debbie, for decades and decades, building a successful marriage counseling ministry that included a popular Youtube channel that garnered millions of views. When after a long battle with cancer Debbie passed away, Mark remarried and by all accounts appears to be a successful, well-adjusted Evangelical Christian.
7.2 Gary
(May 16, 1962 - Sept 20, 2016)
All night I heard the moans that Gary made with each breath and at 6am, my mother came into my room to warn me that it was time, so I quickly put on my clothes and rushed out.
Maritza hadn’t slept much, probably not at all, and in the final moments she was reaching over on his bed, her arms around him. He seemed to be choking on something, probably the liquid that had built up in his throat through the night, so she lifted his head slightly, then took an eyedropper to place a few drops of water on his tongue. He moaned one last time, exhaled, and it was over, Maritza still holding him, and his mother sitting in the chair next to his bed.
The rest of the family came in quickly and everyone cried and hugged for the longest time. Cameron too — I’ve never been hugged so tightly. Amid more tears, we held hands and prayed, reciting Psalm 23, and my mother, sobbing heavily, held me as she pleaded, “Don’t you leave me!”
It’s hard to distill this moment into words because, despite the years of forewarning, the final reality comes with sudden force. Just two days ago, he was in this same bed, talking to his parents; earlier in the month I was driving him to Gulfport for work. It’s hard to realize that those moments with him are now so permanently over.
Gary was always a fighter, for the right causes, but he also had a strong aversion to being dependent on others. During these past few weeks as he recognized his condition was hopeless and deteriorating, I think he was filled with a resolve to not to be a burden to others. No longer able to get out of bed, he didn’t want his family to suffer longer, and I think deep down it was that drive that gave him the strength to embrace the inevitable quickly and efficiently. Even as we gathered around him, crying, I could imagine his voice there with us: “Whatcha all standing around for? Don’t y’all have something to do?”
Maritza dialed the nurse, then Katelynn, then her own mother and a few others. And we waited. Gary’s body, now lifeless, gaunt unshaven face still twisted slightly in the bed, his eyes shut, mouth wide open and expressionless.
The nurse arrived within an hour and with her stethoscope confirmed there was no heartbeat, marking the legal time of death: 7:34. She retreated to the kitchen to fill out the paperwork. The coroner’s office needs to know about every scratch and bruise, a formality to rule out foul play, so she asked me to help move the body so she could see any marks on the back. A few weeks ago, while walking through the new house with Connie, he tripped and fell, and we explained which bruises resulted. Difficult conversations, but necessary she says, because the funeral home will later describe everything to the coroner. She then asked for his medications, carefully counting each narcotic pill for disposal.
The people from the hospice were on the phone and asked if we want to keep the body there longer or if they should call the funeral home. “No you can take the body away now,” Maritza said and they were on their way.
Connie’s plane would be arriving soon, so we decided that Mom would stay here and Dad and I would drive to the airport, an hour or so away. We left at 9:30 and by the time we returned, with Connie, the bed had been cleared and new people had gathered: Maritza’s sister, their mom, and now a string of others throughout the day.
It’s one of the tragedies of a day like this that there is so little you or anyone can do, and for me at least it’s hard to know what to say, or whether to talk at all. Cameron retreated to his room. Katelynn, who had been driven here by a cousin immediately after a college exam, arrived in early afternoon. She was talkative, eager to explain all of her classes and what she thinks of each teacher and her fellow students. I know she was devastated — she and Gary were very close — and I worried that, by holding in her emotions, she might be hiding something deeper. But I don’t know what to do either.
The long line of relatives and well-wishers continued throughout the day, until by dinner time Maritza was looking overwhelmed and in need of her own peace and quiet. But how do you tell that to the good people gathered here, many of whom have left jobs and driven here for hours to see her?
We asked if she’d like to get away for an hour or two, maybe go to dinner with just the close family, but she said no, and besides Cameron didn’t want to leave. So my mom and dad, plus Connie and me — now, forever, just four of us — left for dinner at a quiet restaurant.
Perhaps the only, tragic comfort of a life lost too young is that there are plenty of friends and family alive to share the grief. Gary’s funeral service was packed with relatives, work colleagues, and many friends and neighbors.
This is the eulogy I gave at his funeral.
My brother was taller than me. I didn’t think about it much when I was young because, well, he was older and I was growing too. It’s just not something that ever occurred to me.
Many of you who are seeing me for the first time could be forgiven for wondering if we’re really brothers. We don’t look the same. We live in different parts of the country. We’ve had very different careers. We don’t talk the same. But for the first 18 years of our lives, we were inseparable. Same small town of Neillsville in Central Wisconsin, same parents, same sister, same school, same teachers, same church, same church orchestra, same vacations. We even shared the same room. The only difference between us is that he was a year older. And he was taller, so he got the top bunk.
He was first to Kindergarten, and our family has an interesting story that tells you what kind of person he was, even back then. When the big day arrived, his mother dropped him at the school and told him to wait at this spot for class to end, and she’d pick him up. When the day ended, Gary dutifully went to the appointed location and waited for his mother. And he waited. He waited while all the other kids left with their parents, one by one, and he waited while, finally, even the teacher left and he was alone. I don’t know what happened that day. Probably Mom was caught up dealing with something caused by my sister or me. When she realized the time, she rushed back to school in a panic, thinking Gary would be all upset, probably balling his head off. But instead, she saw him waiting patiently, just as she had told him. “Mommy says she’ll be here, so I just have to wait.”
He was Momma’s boy.
Now that I’m a parent, I understand why my first day of kindergarten went so much more smoothly than his did. The second kid benefits from the mistakes you make on the older one. And that happened all throughout our childhood. Gary did something first, and by the time my turn came around, everything seemed so much easier.
I don’t think Gary liked having a little brother. But I liked — needed — him as a big brother.
He had a rough time in high school, and in some ways I owe my own success there to his example. We were both scrawny and awkward, “city kids” among big, tough farm boys. You can’t blame the ugly glasses or the mismatched clothing all on the 70’s. Face it, we were dorky. Perfect targets for any bully.
But he had to face all that awkwardness first. By the time they got done picking on him, they were bored with Spragues and ready to try some other kid. I was lucky to be younger.
He had better success outside school. His first job was delivering papers. Up every morning before dark, before school, in the Wisconsin cold. Fifty houses to visit on bike before school. If that bike broke down on the route, he had to fix it himself. In the summers, Dad put us to work too: cutting trees out in the woods.
Later, he found a job at a grocery store and saved his money. He bought his own car (and paid the insurance and gas), then a boat. All before he was 18. How many kids today can say that?
Then I left for college. Our parents moved to New Orleans, and Gary found himself alone in our home town. He was doing well — that grocery store owner told me recently that Gary was “one of the one or two best employees” he had in his entire 50+ year career at that store. I believe it. Nobody was more diligent than Gary.
But I think he missed his family, because after about a year he moved to Louisiana too, never looking back. For his entire life he was proud that he’d had enough initiative to leave his home town. It’s the advice he gave his children: follow the opportunity and don’t be afraid to move, far away if necessary.
After moving to New Orleans, he did okay for a while, but he had a hard time figuring out what sort of life he wanted. He didn’t want to keep working at an hourly job; he wanted a salary, a career, maybe in something like banking, a difficult choice for a young man with no experience or college degree. But he persevered, submitting applications throughout the south shore until he landed an entry job as a teller at the Whitney Bank in Kenner. It was a pay cut for him, but it’s something he really wanted to do, so on the side — nights and weekends — he did one more thing that ended up leading to the biggest and most important thing in his life.
He took a part-time job at Walmart, where he caught the attention of a girl named Maritza Feinstein. And everyone who knew Gary before and after will tell you that’s when his life really began. She saw something in him that until that moment he hadn’t seen in himself. He told me, “She makes me feel like I can do anything!” and it was true. For the first time in his life, he felt tall!
His life after that just clicked. They bought a house, fixed it up, bought another one, fixed it up. The kids arrived. He wasn’t afraid to work hard, and for many years he continued to work multiple jobs to provide for his family. Nobody worked more hours, or slept fewer than Gary in those years.
A diligent and honest worker, he served in a wide variety of positions at the bank, a breadth of experiences that, during the chaos of Hurricane Katrina, proved his invaluable operations abilities, earning a promotion to VP. After the recovery, he moved his family to Covington, where he bought a big home, surrounded by close family and friends.
And he watched his family grow. He was so proud of his kids. His daughter Kateylnn: a straight-A student, so smart, so confident. And Cameron, so far beyond anything Gary could have done. Gary played in the high school band, but nothing like Cameron. And Cameron: so good-looking, so many friends. Gary was so proud.
When we first heard the diagnosis, it was out of the blue. My brother had never been sick a day in his life, not a broken bone.
In fact, one of my earliest memories was of me in the hospital, looking down the corridor at my sister and brother. The doctors told us that I was unlikely to live, and that this could be the last time I see my brother. But now, here almost 50 years later, I was in the corridor again, only this time Gary was on the wrong side of the hallway!
But he fought it. He did every treatment he could find, changed whatever he had to to beat that thing. And all the while he insisted on continuing to do what he thought was important: work and most of all family.
A few weeks ago, I was with him on what looking back was probably his last really good day. He was full of energy and wanted me to drive with him to Gulfport for a business meeting.
And that’s how I will remember him: walking into that big glass headquarters building wearing his white shirt and banker tie, briefcase in hand. Confident. Dependable. Independent. A proud father. Devoted husband. Sincere and believing Christian. A loyal son. Great friend. My Big Brother.
He’s still taller than me.