WHO WAS JACK LIONEL COLE?

Jack Cole was born to a Polish immigrant mother and a first generation Polish father in 1924, in Highland Park, Michigan. He was the youngest of three children, with a sister and a brother. His mother, Tilly Sanders, came to the U.S.A. from Warsaw when she was eight years old. She died in 1979 or 1980 and was around 85 years old, so she must have arrived in the U.S. around 1904 or 1905. Her father’s name was Alexander Petrovsky, but his name was changed at Ellis Island to Alex Sanders. Jack described him as a big Russian who constantly drilled him as a little boy on the names of Columbus’ ships. Polish was never spoken in their house. They had come to America and the national language in the U.S.A. was English, so that is what they spoke. Jack’s father, whose real last name was Cohen, worked for Dun and Bradstreet, but I never knew in what capacity. The family name was officially changed in 1944 to Cole, however the family had used the name Cole, I suspect, for a very long time, since Jack’s birth certificate was issued to the Cole family. At some point, the family moved to Chicago and lived on Division Street. Tillie had two sisters, and I don’t know about brothers, but there were at least three families and the grandfather, Alex Sanders, who lived together in a narrow, two-story house with an attic. Jack and his brother, Marvin, slept in the attic. Jack told me how very cold it was in the winter and hot in the summer. Tillie Cole worked at May & Company in the children’s department for many years; her favorite customer was the great Nat “King” Cole. She said he would come into the store to buy clothes for his daughter, Natalie, and call out for “Mrs. Cole! No relation, you know!” One uncle drove a cab and Aunt Betty stayed home, cooking, cleaning and taking care of the house. She was in total control of the house and everything in it. When she mopped the floors, she covered them with newspaper and no one was allowed to walk on them. Dinner time was 6 p.m. sharp, and if you weren’t seated at 6:00, you didn’t eat. Bedtime for Jack and Marvin was 9 p.m. and remained 9 p.m. until Jack joined the Navy at 16 or 17, straight out of high school. No one defied Aunt Betty. Whoever could get a job, worked and contributed to the household. Jack’s mom told me that he built a ship model when he was 10 years old and sold it to buy paint for the house. He told me about working at a green grocer’s, and when a customer came in and asked for a peck of spinach—he was maybe 13 at the time—and he had no idea how big a peck was, but it sounded big. He started stuffing sack after sack with spinach until the owner saw what was happening and saved the day. I guess that memory was so vivid for him because he really hated looking foolish. One of his fondest memories was swiping a potato and joining his buddies to build a fire in a vacant lot where they tossed their potatoes in the coals to cook. Another lingering memory was of sneaking up to the sauerkraut barrel Aunt Berry kept on the back stoop and grabbing a handful. Those were probably the worst things he did as a boy. By some standards, the Cole family was a “poor” Jewish, immigrant family. Tillie, Jack’s mom, told me that when he was a really little boy, maybe two or three, she had to send him to live with one of the aunts outside the city somewhere for almost a year. She had to work and there was no one to take care of her little boy while she was at work. When Jack finally came home, he walked in, looked around and said, “No front room!” Jack told me that at times they had to accept welfare food, but the adults would try to slip it into the house so the children did not see it. In some of the summers, he would go to an uncle’s farm in Iowa, I think, and work for the summer. He told of seeing a sow eat one of her newborn piglets. Pigs will do that, but the memory still upset him 40 years later. Jack Cole had one of the softest hearts I’ve ever known, especially when it came to animals. Once, I asked him if he begrudged the fact that they were poor. He mulled the question over for a moment and said that he had never given it a thought. The family was a close one, with morals and rules that were not broken. He doesn’t remember anyone ever laying a hand on him for disobedience, but then he rarely disobeyed. The punishment for infractions of the rules was the silent treatment, and, oh, how he hated that. That was how he punished me when he was really mad at me, which was not often. Jack was a straight A student. He was on the fencing, basketball and baseball teams. A special day in his life came when he was able to buy his first pair of second-hand, hightop basketball shoes. When he would tell me that story, his face still lit up. He was so proud of those shoes. His brother, Marvin, said the girls used to circle him like bees after honey, but he was so shy he would just hang his head and kick the dirt. Jack was a real pretty boy in his youth, with the most marvelous green eyes. When he worked for the green grocer, he would walk to work with a older friend who liked to would stop off at the local house of ill repute on the way to work. Jack would sit out in the parlor eating his little sack lunch while waiting for his friend, and the unoccupied girls would all gather around him and talk to him until his friend finished his interlude. One of Jack’s uncles taught English or History at the University of Illinois and Jack was definitely college bound.

He wanted to study Entomology, which is a real hoot because he hated bugs. World War II derailed his college plans as it did for many young men. As soon as he graduated from high school, he went down to enlist in the Navy. He was only 16 at the time, and the recruiter sent him home and told him to come back when he had quit biting his finger nails. I’m not sure how long that took, but he did enlist at the earliest possible date.