Randi Walls:  

ate lunch at school! (In the K-8 elementary schools in Chicago, kids always walked home for lunch.) We lived in North Avondale and Bond Hill. When I returned to live with my mom in Rogers Park in Chicago for 9th grade in 1963 (MY choice, for once - I wanted to go back home!), I attended Sullivan High School (1963-64). At the end of 9th grade, when a couple of my close friends moved away to other schools in the Chicago area, I transferred to Senn High School for 10th, 11th, and 12th grades (1964-67). I lived within Senn's boundaries anyway. I finally found a true and wonderful home at Senn and made some of my very best friends and memories there. "Bob's" restaurant/diner, which was across the street from Senn, was where we all hung out during lunch. I went to a place called "Harry's" to eat lunch too. Nobody cool ate lunch in the school cafeteria! I still miss hanging out at the beach. I spent lots of time sunning at the beach during the parts of the spring and summer that I was in town (as opposed to visiting my dad in Cincinnati). I also remember some swell beach parties that we had! I spent a lot of time, as well, on the Near North side of Chicago, to where one of my best friends, Laura Niccoli, had moved. She and I would walk through Lincoln Park Zoo and all through Old Town, Maxwell Street, and more. We had many adventures and the city was ours! My other best friend form high school was (and still is) Paula Richards. We became like sisters at Senn, as did Laura and me, even though Laura went to a different school. Laura and I maintained a scrapbook for years that we called "The Book". It was clever and filled with everything from memorabilia of our adventures together on Chicago's near north side to drawings, poems, caricatures of other kids, you name it. We took turns keeping "The Book" for a week or two each, and gave it to one another when we were together on the weekends. It was a masterpiece, truly. We had a falling out in the early '70s and I threw it away. There are few things I regret more in my life than doing that!! I was thrilled to find her again on Facebook a few years ago. There have been several rather unusual similarities and parallels in our lives, from our birthdates, interests and talents, similar looks, losing our younger sisters in 1969, and the men we later married even though we hadn't spoken for about 40 years. I truly feel we were twins or connected in some way in another life. Paula is still my rock today and always will be, even as we live thousands of miles apart. And I have many other best friends with whom I still have contact from just about every school I attended and city I lived in since grade 3. Leslie Passin Kazmierowski was my best friend in Chicago when I was 9, then we lost contact after high school and reconnected about 40+ years later, and are best friends once again. I have many other lifelong best friends today from all my "many lives" and travels - too many to mention but all of them dear to me. I am a "hopeless romantic"; therefore, from the age of 5 onward I was always "in love" with some little boy in the neighborhood or at school. At the beginning of my senior year at Senn, October 15, 1966 to be exact, I met a boy from the suburbs of Chicago named Bill Giardini. Bill was my first true, innocent "puppy love" and he broke my heart. He's the one I have never forgotten! After I graduated from Senn, summer of 1967, I got a swell part-time job working for a patent attorney whose office was in the Marina City towers in downtown Chicago. I used to get dressed up in my little work outfits and carry my little purse and ride the bus and the "L" (the subway) downtown to my job and felt very important and grown up. The night before I was to leave Chicago and move to Cincinnati to start college (that would have been early September, 1967, I believe), my then boyfriend Tom took me to "The Cheetah", a popular dance place for teenagers. Of course, "The Cheetah" is long gone now, like so much of the Windy City I used to know and dearly love back in the old days. What an era - the fabulous Baby Boomer '50s and '60s. I lived with a little transistor radio glued to my ear during the day, or stuffed under my pillow at night! In Cincinnati, WSAI was the king of Top 40 AM radio. In Chicago WLS (and later, in the mid '60s) WCFL radio were radio history phenomenons. Does anyone (from Chicago) remember the famous WLS "beep line" in the '60s? The infamous Dick Biondi? "Chicken Man" (originated and put into national syndication by those who worked in the studios of WCFL)? The WCFL "Mini-Spin"? More on family: Both sets of parents presented me with a sibling in 1956, a baby brother and a baby sister: Janson, son of Joe and Lee Becker in Cincinnati (August,1956) and Idele (Delly), daughter of Miriam and Irv Haimes in Chicago (January, 1956). I was about 7 years old when they were born. Loved them both so much!! Today, my brother Jan Becker is a physician in Cincinnati; my sweet sister "Delly" passed away from aplastic anemia in August of 1969 at the age of 13 in Chicago. (My only son, David, was born on Delly's birthday the following January 28, 1970.) In a way, she came back to us, as I was so happy to be able to present my son to the world, and especially to Mom and Irv, the same day as my little sister was born 14 years earlier. A psychic recently (2014) told me that Delly is my guardian angel and that she kisses me goodnight every night. I always assumed that she was my son David's guardian angel. None the less, a lovely thought. My first husband, my son David's father, is Charles "Skip" Cauper (born/raised in Boston, Mass.). We met in college (University of Cincinnati). About the time that I earned my bachelor's degree in 1974, the marriage ended. A newly single mom, I went on to graduate school, worked a couple of part-time jobs (including waitressing), scrimped and saved, and finally received my master's in 1976. I had a paying internship for one year, then on to a real job, which took me to Oxford, Ohio in 1977! I remained single for eleven years before marrying my second husband, Bob Walls in 1985. I lived in Oxford, Ohio (about one hour north of Cincinnati) for seven years and worked as the school psychologist for Talawanda City Schools there in Oxford for eight years. I did some occasional guest speaking for classes at Miami University in Oxford, as well as took classes there. I also became involved in the local community theater there, OXACT. I had a good life there in Oxford. I hated to leave. But a new life called. In 1985 I left Oxford (southwest Ohio) to move to Youngstown in northeast Ohio (in between Cleveland and Pittsburgh, PA), and to marry my second husband, Bob. It was a VERY difficult transition at first, but, after 21 years, I learned to love that old "mob" town. (Youngstown is even mentioned - given a nod, if you will, in a few episodes of "The Sopranos"). I worked for The Youngstown City Schools. I became a teachers' union rep for two four-year terms, and walked two picket lines (Youngstown was famous for its strong union activity). I made some wonderful life-long friends there. Youngstown, now considered to be a "rust belt" city, used to be a wealthy, booming steel mill town. Its people still remember and embrace those old days. Youngstown still is home to some beautiful architecture, some beautiful buildings which still serve as places where the symphony and national artists still come to perform. The Warner Brothers used to live in Youngstown, and built Powers Auditorium, which still sits downtown, to showcase their films back in the day. Physically, Youngstown is laid out somewhat like Cincinnati, only it's a much smaller city, of course. But the ethnicity of its people is more like that of Chicago. So I fit right in. And I wish I still lived there! Sadly, my marriage to Bob ended and here I am stuck back in good old southern Ohio, since 2006. In retrospect, I still have regrets about having to leave my former life in my beloved Chicago after graduating from Senn High School in 1967. That hurt, but my dad insisted that I return to Cincinnati, Ohio and attend UC. In the ensuing years I returned to Chicago frequently to visit Mom, Irv, Delly (before she passed away), and other family and all my friends, but I never again lived there. And eventually, over time ... it just wasn't the same ... "The City" surely moved on without me. Laura and Paula moved away too. But we all still love our home, Chicago. I still have such nostalgic memories of growing up there. But that is all the city is to me now ... nostalgic memories. On the other hand, since I left Chicago in 1967, I made many new memories here in Ohio through the years as I continued my journey through life and continued learning, experiencing and "growing up". As Dad would often tell me, life is full of trade-offs ... "embrace new chapters, new books of your life", he would tell me. That has certainly been the case in for me. As Richard Fish used to say on the TV program Ally McBeal, "bygones". Well, perhaps ... I self-published a memoir of my life in 2010. I put a LOT into it, but close friends/family tell me it misses the mark. Oh, well! Still, I am proud of it - something to leave behind for my grandchildren. I named it "Fold Your Arms and Smile", My Mosaic of Love, Loss and Survival, by Randi Becker Walls. You see, my maternal grandfather, Sam Klein (also known as "Gab"), was a welter weight wrestler in Cincinnati when he was a young man. For his "day job" (he owned a furniture store and moving business) he had some business cards printed. The cards reflected his philosophy of life. Shown on each card was a terrific picture of him as a young wrestler, standing tough and tall, arms folded. Underneath his picture was written: "When Troubles Come Don't Lose Your Head. Fold Your Arms and Smile Instead." I