Invisible Ink

by Guy Stern

  As I have told elsewhere, Bobby invited me to his inauguration in Jefferson City and thereby enabled me to identify, in the person of Missouri Senator John Danforth, an erstwhile high school student who had performed brilliantly in a session of Columbia University’s “Forum on Democracy,” led by me. Bobby also became the catalyst for a second, equally unlikely chance encounter. In 1988 he decided to run for the US Congress and asked me to be one of his campaign speakers. (I hasten to add that he didn’t win despite or because of my oratorical arts.) One of those was in full employment at a manor house on Saint Louis’s elegant Lindell Boulevard before a predominantly Jewish audience. The host was Ronald Reich, a prominent community leader. Talking about my continued Jewish upbringing since coming to Saint Louis, I mentioned that we prayed, for economic reasons, in a humble prayer room, where the service was conducted by a gifted volunteer, Mr. Ansky. A cry of surprise emanated from the back of the spacious room: “Why, that is my uncle!” exclaimed our host. Candidate Feigenbaum was greatly pleased that my memories of my Saint Louis past had brought Mr. Reich even more closely into his fold!

  There was yet another tributary to be explored. My wife Margith left me a legacy. She maintained a close friendship with one of her cousins. Jo was a frequent visitor to our apartment in Queens and that continued when she moved to Tampa, Florida and married Robert Franzblau, co-owner of a cigar factory. When Margith and I got divorced, the Franzblaus decided to retain me in their family. There is scarcely a family celebration, including two huge family reunions, one in Tuscany and another in a luxury hotel also in Italy, to which we were invited as well.

  And one other addition stepped into my reassembled family circle. Susanna is very attached to her cousin, Joanna and her husband, Christoph Konopinski. When she and her husband introduce me to their friends, it is invariably, as their cousin. I feel honored and pleased that I have gathered these remnants and new additions around me.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  A Broken Promise

  This book started with the promise that this “confession” would be irrevocably the final word on the subject of the life and times of Guy Stern. But as happened so often before, a chance encounter would decree otherwise and in a most extraordinary way. Chuck Bernard, a fellow member of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers, and a new acquaintance, along with his fellow founder of the tailgate party, Tom Christian asked me, in all innocence, whether he could nominate me as “Veteran of the Game” at the football homecoming game at the University of Michigan on October 6, 2018. I simply and obligingly told Chuck: “Why not?” I was absolutely convinced that the selection process wouldn’t settle on a member of an obscure Army unit nicknamed “The Ritchie Boys.”

  Also, my acquaintance with that quaint game called “football” was infinitesimally small and sporadic. My first distant encounter came during my freshman year at Soldan High School. Our principal announced at short notice that all 11:00 am classes were canceled in favor of a “pep rally” in the high school auditorium. What happened there was both noisy and, at least for me, mysterious. We were to encourage our football team, prior to the decisive game for the league championship game, by shouting dubious poetry during their efforts. So we rehearsed under the guidance of our cheerleaders (all males) such memorable verses as the following:

  “Izzagasiss, izzagasane,

  Knock ’em down, yeah man!

  Hit ’em high, hit ’em low,

  Come on Soldan, let’s go!”

  I joined in the shouting match, but saw no reason to go to the game, nor to any other one at my high school or my first year at Saint Louis University. But in my sophomore year, Mary Jane, a fellow student in Professor Mihailovich’s sociology class, approached me: “Hey Guy, my dad is driving me to Saturday’s football game. Want to tag along?” I was surprised and pleased. She and I had locked horns all through the semester. Mary Jane supported our professor throughout the spreading of his conservative views, for example, that divine punishment after death would have something to do with fire, because so many societal myths around the globe supported such a hypothesis. Like one of the iconoclasts of old I had, not too politely, opposed the assumption of the professor and of her. My dissent carried the day. After all I had sat at the feet of that master logician, Father Reeve. During the game she was appalled at my abysmal lack of even the subbasics about the rules of football and never invited me again.

  The years went past, as told in these pages, and I the warrior, student, and professor had ascended to the post of vice president of Wayne State University. On a fall day of 1993 our president, Tom Bonner, called me to his office. “Guy, next Saturday is the opening game of our football season. As vice president, you must go!” That was a command. I went to our library and immersed myself in a book on the rules and maneuvers of football. Mary Jane’s contempt had taught me a lesson. I memorized terms such as lateral, double reverse, penalty because of unnecessary roughness, and quarterback sneak. I liberally threw these terms around and thus avoided being tagged with the new-fangled sobriquet “nerd.”

  Well, as you might surmise by now, the ladies and gentlemen of the University of Michigan’s Selection Committee for the Veteran of the Game, chose me. The contest was to take place between the stalwarts of the Michigan Wolverines and their opponents, the Maryland Terrapins. And I was briefed: “Your wife and you should arrive two-and-a-half hours before the game and participate in a tailgate party. You’ll be assisted throughout by a group of The U of M-Dearborn Student Veterans, led by Tom Pitock.” (I made a valiant effort to remember all the names that would lead me through that unknown territory of a huge football field.) I got further briefings. My fans, old and new, coming from near and far, would gather under a tent for food and drink and greet one another across the years. Idyllic weather was predicted.

  The latter factor prevailed upon Susanna to come along. She hadn’t felt well the days prior to the event, but she didn’t want to miss that stellar moment when I was to earn applause from the capacity crowd of 110,000 spectators. But that was not to be. A rainstorm threatened to lift the sheltering tent from its moorings; a particularly violent squall opened the tent’s top and poured streams of water down on us, specifically down Susanna’s back. I convinced my freezing, thoroughly miserable better half that this tent and stadium was no place for her. She went home with our friend Diane Bouis, our host during our overnight stay in Ann Arbor.

  Michigan has a traditional saying: “Don’t curse the weather; within ten minutes it will reverse itself.” Although it was far longer than ten minutes and the game was delayed for over an hour, we had mild sunshine when the opening whistle blew. In the meanwhile one imaginative volunteer, Ken Magee, asked for silence in the tent and introduced us to an annual custom he had started many years ago. Ken had obtained, in advance, a picture of the veteran to be honored and made it the centerpiece of an ID card with its backside retelling the daring deeds of the honoree. He made numerous copies of his creation and liberally distributed them to the invited guests of the tailgate party. Ken Magee followed his speech with a sharp command: “Outside everyone!” The largest band I had ever seen was preparing to pass and salute the tent housing the honored veteran. The size of the band dwarfed the seventy-six trombones blasting away in the musical The Music Man. Oldsters and freshmen, representatives of dozens of different nationalities, but all with the same serious mien, blasted, drummed, and whistled their way past us, with nods to me. And with that, Act I of my part, seemed past. But no, I was told to stay put. The majorette of the band was rushing back, embraced me, and planted a chaste kiss on both my cheeks. She was truly attractive, the picture of an athlete, and the thought bestirred me that she could easily be my great-granddaughter.

  We were rushed to our protected booth; the game was about to begin. My friends wildly cheered the home team. I joined in. No longer any sing-song like “Izzagasiss.” Instead there appeared flashing announcements on the scoreboards: “Make noise!” The game itself was hard
fought and the lead shifted. But to my delight the University of Michigan, “Champions of the West,” “creamed” the invaders from Maryland. I hadn’t forgotten my sorrowful days on the campus of that institution.

  I was completely absorbed in the game and had all but forgotten that I had a role to play. Bryan Assenmacher, a student army veteran, interrupted my removal from reality: “Time to go downstairs! The wheelchairs are waiting!” For that I was unprepared. In a fit of annoyance I protested that anyone else was welcome to take my designated seat. But I was quickly quieted. A person in charge of that whole enterprise told us it was a precautionary rule that obliged us to take advantage of the wheelchairs. Also my escort was a USAF veteran by the name of Joe Melcher, who seemed in need of such a contrivance. He was being accompanied by his daughter Kate, a retired air force captain and now spearheading the drive for the establishment of the nonprofit Fisher House (for veterans’ families) in Ann Arbor. So we went in tandem down dark corridors, steep inclines, and past dressing rooms, which, rumor had it, were never meant to be seen by the general public. (I was reminded of a murder mystery by Scott Turow, taking place in a similar setting, populated by a basketball team.)

  But nothing untoward happened to us. We were deposited behind the goalposts of the Michigan team during the third quarter and trotted out during the first break. We walked in military steps to the thirty-yard line, as though we wanted to demonstrate to the crowd that we were years removed from requiring those mandated wheelchairs. All of a sudden an abbreviated biography of me appeared on the scoreboard, described my “exploits” in World War II and highlighted, as I had requested, the tragedy of my family.

  While we were standing there, the thousands of spectators broke forth in shattering applause. For me that was the experience of a lifetime. As we retreated, so many strangers rushed up to me, thanking me for my service and erasing so many self-doubts going back to my years living under a dictatorship and being the victim of discrimination and harassment. I felt enveloped by the total approval and acceptance of my fellow Americans and I gloried in that approbation.

  EPILOGUE

  In Pursuit of the Future

  Looking back on this account of my life written as truthfully as my memory could evoke it, I feel an additional need of self-reflection. What is my attitude toward my country of asylum? Under normal circumstances and throughout all the years of my US citizenship that answer need not have been written. The United States, to put it simply, saved my life. Without allowing me to arrive at its shores, I would have been on the train taking me to perdition as was the fate of my immediate and extended family. As my life took root here there were so many additional benefits bestowed upon me. Without those benefits my saved life would not have unfolded as fully. I was able to complete my twice-interrupted education, first through the fact that I went to a free public school, then I finished my college and university studies because of the liberal gift of the so-called GI Bill of Rights.

  My country financed my schooling through two years of undergraduate work and through five years of graduate study and left even enough of a fund to pay for the typing of my dissertation. During my first years in the United States the Jewish community of Saint Louis paid for my health and dental insurance and for occasional short stays at a hospital. If I think of the heavy debt that many students incur these days, I become doubly conscious of that generosity. There were other grants and benefits too numerous to mention. What ingrate would not have taken this country and its citizens to heart in a mood of unbound gratitude?

  To put my thankfulness in one sentence: I became an American patriot, I hope, in the best and most positive sense of the word. In looking back on this enthusiasm for the country of my asylum, I conclude that this attitude wasn’t free of criticism of my country not having fulfilled some of its promises and potentials.

  Can I sustain this attitude for the rest of my life? In posing that question I look back on moments in my army career when we pledged a vow of allegiance to this country with the unambiguous phrase “One nation, indivisible. . . .” So I ask; can this avowal be maintained at the time of this writing? Have not events occurred that split our nation—beyond the necessary debates of the ways and means of reaching that goal? Or is it not true that this oath, taken by all service men and women and many other citizens has to be reattained? Should we not rededicate ourselves to unite our country again, to paraphrase Henry Clay. We found that strength after the Civil War. My affection for this country endures, but I would like to be reassured that the country that harbored me for more than fifty years has reaffirmed the idealism of all patriots who lived before me throughout our history.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I needed help. When relatives, friends, and colleagues greeted my narratives about my checkered life with the exclamation that I absolutely must write my autobiography, I was rather skeptical. Sure, I had written scholarly books and articles and still do, even some short reports about my life as a soldier during World War II, but these suggestions loomed as something formidable. Also, I was now somewhat older.

  But help was at hand. The first offer came from my wife, Susanna. She would keep other scholarly demands from my doorsteps, discuss my work with me, and do proofreading. Many of her thoughts turned out to be useful and inspirational. And so it is no surprise that page one of this book carries a dedication to her and the last page starts with a thank you to Susanna.

  There are many others to whom I owe thanks. The first chapters show the fingerprints of my then assistant at the Holocaust Memorial Center Zekelman Family Campus, Rebecca Swindler, who had come to us as an intern under the auspices of the University of Michigan-Dearborn. There were other invaluable helpers. From “Day One,” the department secretary of us all in the Ancient and Modern Language Department at Wayne State, Amanda Rayha Donigian, applied her unsurpassable organizational skills to my project. Parallel to the beginning was a rescuer at the very end. I had scouted for a bilingual office assistant for some time. What I got was not only a German speaker but a most sensitive observer and practitioner of English, nicknamed at one time “the grammar police”—Liesa Hess Helfer turned out to be a multitalented editor.

  But then I needed more than fingerprints. I needed space and calm. My new bosses at the Holocaust Memorial Center, Stephen Goldman, and later, his successor, Rabbi Eli Mayerfeld, encouraged me to work at the “new book,” when otherwise unoccupied and the spiritual leaders at my synagogue, Temple Shir Shalom, Rabbis Dannel Schwartz, Michael Moskovitz, and Daniel Schwartz, gave me a quiet space in an annex to the house of worship.

  Then, in collaboration with the museum, I found an able and meticulous assistant who accompanied my labors for the two-and-a-half years to its conclusion. Shirlee Wyman Harris typed my quirky handwriting, even when she had to intuit its German content, looked up data for me, and told me when I had lapsed in academes. Best of all, she convinced me that the title of the book, Invisible Ink, was more fitting than all alternatives.

  There were two teams that encouraged me when I was showing signs of tiring. They were my colleagues at Wayne State University, Don Haase, Al Cobbs, and Walter Hinderer of Princeton University. And the second team that self-selected itself as my research assistants. They were Dan Gross, a retired engineer; Stephen Goodell, a former department head at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum; and Feiga Weiss, the HMC’s head librarian and chief archivist.