Royko in Love
Introduction Long before becoming an acclaimed newspaper columnist, Mike Royko was a young airman secretly in love with a beautiful gal from his Northwest Side neighborhood. From afar, “Mick” began to pour out his feelings in a torrent of letters that ultimately won her heart. Discovered after his death, they show glimmers of the wit and voice that would one day distinguish Royko’s prose—and a romantic streak buried beneath the wise-guy exterior. ------------
Contributors March 2009: David Royko By Graham Meyer Growing up, David Royko, son of the legendary newspaper columnist Mike Royko and editor of Royko in Love, learned the family mythology about how his father wooed his mother through letters. “Until I actually had them physically, I had a hard time imagining they did exist,” David Royko says. “It feels like a Hollywood movie to me, but it’s very real and it’s what happened with my parents: boy loves girl, boy loses girl, boy sees a chance to get girl back and does it through letters.” A freelance writer and clinical psychologist, Royko directs the Cook County Circuit Court’s Marriage and Family Counseling Service. --- Photography: Michael Boone Photography/Courtesy of David Royko ---
COMMENTS [from Chicago Magazine, chicagomag.com] Mar 23, 2009 06:59 pm Posted by ual727 My name is Don Karaiskos. I'm mentioned in the first paragraph of this piece. I was Mike's roommate while we were at Blaine, WA. I took those pictures with my camera on that Easter Sunday in 1954. How lucky for me that I "drew" this man to be my roommate for almost two years. He was a complex person in many ways but in the ways that really counted, he had a sentimentality about him that defied description. This sentimentality of course comes to the fore in his letters to Carol. Also, his genuine interest in those he called his friends. I was discharged from the Air Force two months before he was married but I knew all those guys who were in attendance at the wedding. We remained in contact after our stints in the service, trading visits to their place at 5408 N Central and our home in Ohio. I was an airline pilot by profession and lived out in Crystal Lake for a spell. We visited each other during that time. After I left my Chicago residence to be based in Cleveland. I had many layovers at the Palmer House. Mike either visited me in my room or we met at Billy Goat's. What an outstanding person he was. Very few days go by when I don't think about him and our times together there in Washington State. After I met Carol it was easy to see why he harbored the love for her that he did as she was a wonderful person also. I used to see him sitting at the desk in our barracks room writing those letters every day. Of course he never spoke of the content of those letters - he was like Captain Miller in "Saving Private Ryan" when asked about his wife. Captain Miller replied "Those are things that I preserve for myself". That was Mike. ............................. Mar 2, 2009 10:09 am Posted by Dolmance I lived in a really rough neighborhood in Chicago and started reading Mike Royko when I was ten years old. He had a perfect mix of goodness and cynicism that made for a fundamentally decent person one would be hard pressed to make a fool out of. When I left Chicago in my mid teens, I could honestly say that the only good thing that happened to me in that city was Mike Royko. Mar 2, 2009 11:27 am Posted by Graziella I always loved reading Royko's column and I was glad to have been given the chance to see more of his inner soul. Absolutely great writer!!!! ............................. Grace M Weber, Seneca, IL Mar 2, 2009 11:40 am Posted by nostalgic Are there any men like this left who are so willing to put their love in black and white? ............................. Mar 2, 2009 12:42 pm Posted by Blomette I too, grew up reading Mike Royko in the Daily New in the 1960s. I lived in Highland Park at the time, though I attended Deerfield H.S. After I graduated from high school, I was overjoyed to find his columns were sydicated and I could find them in other newspapers! Thank for this! Pam ............................. Mar 3, 2009 01:24 am Posted by miscanthus What a heartwarming selection of letters! I grew up about 3 blocks from that address on Central Avenue. During my high school and college years it was a great pleasure to get home from school and read Mike Royko's column in the Daily News each evening. I would have been delighted to know that your mother had lived in my neighborhood. Thank you for sharing the personal side of one of my favorite writers. Mary in Texas ............................. Mar 4, 2009 11:03 pm Posted by rjchiarito This is a truly amazing article! I consider myself one of Royko's biggest fans and urge anyone who likes him to join the Facebook group Royko is God at http://www.facebook.com/wall.php?id=21235063655#/group.php?gid=21235063655 ............................. Mar 17, 2009 07:11 am Posted by gladiator I was on my way back to Chicago from Vietnam, where I had been a war correspondent attached to the First Marine Division at DaNang. I had lived for a while in Australia, spent a week in New Zealand, and now I was in the airport at Auckland. I had gone up on the walkaway above the waiting room. Looking over the crowd of travelers, a beautiful tall redhead appeared with orange curls, very elegant in her best traveling clothes. Mmmm. She was something like Deborah Kerr in AN AFFAIR TO REMEMBER with Cary Grant, but with a long Viking face. I made my way downstairs and inserted myself into her path, saying, "Hello." I was a rough, common-looking character in blue jeans, and her nose was in the air. She sniffed,"Hello," back, but she didn't notice me at all. I was quite beneath her line of vision. We were on the same plane to Tahiti, but I didn't get to speak to her again. In Tahiti, I met up with a tennis pro who was on a world tour and we hung out. And then one night I ran into the redhead again, in a hotel lounge. She was with a Swiss fellow I had also met--and I was to learn later that he had warned her not to have anything to do with me, that I looked disreputable. But anyway I asked her to dance. There was beautiful music playing and the Polynesian waves were hitting the shore under a bright moon, palm trees waving in the breeze. She turned me down. So I asked again. She turned me down again. The third time I asked her, she danced with me. And after that she wanted to dance every dance with me. We danced under the stars; it was very romantic. And even though we didn't even kiss, when I walked her back to her room, I told her that we were going to be married some day. We exchanged addresses, but I'm sure she didn't take me seriously in the slightest. Kathleen was on her way back to Yorkshire via Montreal, and I was on my way back to Chicago via Mexico. She was British and French royalty, and was born in Steeple Lodge at Wentworth Castle, the first structure listed in the National Registry, built by the Earl of Strafford. She had attended England's first grammar school at Penistone, church at Bolsterstone, and she loved the Eweden Valley, where later I would scatter her ashes. I was a common boy from the rough streets of Chicago. It is common for travelers to exchange addresses and never hear from each other again, so maybe Kathleen was surprised to hear from me when I returned to Chicago. In those days you exchanged letters only once every two weeks. There was no e-mail, with its lightning courtships of several letters a day. But gradually her letters became more and more affectionate and full of love for me, and when I told her that my prospects were not very good, she didn't seem to care. And finally I sent her a one-way ticket to Chicago. She often related to me her surprise upon opening the letter to find a ticket. She ran to her mother, said with astonishment, "It's a ticket!" and asked what to do. My beloved mother-in-law said, "Go for it, love." But her Uncle Johnny bought her a return ticket just in case. She was one of those rare girls as beautiful inside as she was outside, and all the moreso for not knowing that she was. One time she came to me all a-twitter, and I asked, "What's up with you?" She said, "Some construction workers whistled at me!" "Sure. You're a dish." "Oh, I am not!" She didn't have a clue the effect she had on people. I always said that if she had taken tea at Buckingham Palace, the queen would have sought her good opinion. People automatically deferred to her, but she was gracious, friendly and kind to everyone. I used to say, "She doesn't eat, she makes her own clothes, she's always the same age as the day I met her, and she thinks I'm God." And when I was worried about our economics, she would respond airily, "Oh, you'll work it out." She never worried, and maybe it was her faith in me that made me a better man than I had any right to be. After many years of marriage, living in Britain and America with our beautiful children, as she lay dying we agreed that it seemed like we had been together only a very short time. I was a common boy from the rough streets of the big city, she was an elegant girl from rural Yorkshire. It had been like living inside a movie with Mrs. Miniver, being married to her. Yet somehow we had made it work, and I had become her knight of the round table. I loved my dear more at the end than I had at the start. Carrying her ashes on my lap across the Atlantic, to Eweden Valley, where I would fulfill Kathleen's dearest wish, the lady in the next seat asked me if my wife hadn't wanted to join me on the trip. I looked down at the can containing her ashes and thought, Mmmm, I have it in my power to spoil this woman's flight... When I returned home, I found this poem typed on a scrap of paper in one of her drawers: When I am gone-- Think of me not as your disconsolate lover; Think of the joy it gave me to adore you, Of sun and stars you helped me to discover. And this still living part of me will come To sit beside you, in the empty room. Then all on earth that Death has left behind Will be the merry part of me within your mind.