Dad’s father (Weborg Engstrom) and mother (Minnie) moved from Sweden to Minnesota in 1895. They had two children (dad and Ruth) while living in Milaca, which was a small and fairly poor town in the middle of Minnesota. Dad’s father was a pharmacist, and he died of the flu epidemic in January, 1919. Dad was three and a half years old, and he looked at his dying father and announced that he would personally go to a pharmacy and buy some medicine to cure him.
Grandma Minnie raised dad and his sister (Aunt Ruth, one or two years younger). She cleaned and ironed clothes for people, and took her children to the church both daytime Sundays as well as Wednesday evenings. She later told us stories, including the fact that on Wednesday evenings, wolves would attack the horse which was pulling the wagon.
Dad had a close friend, Don Engebretson. One extremely cold winter Saturday, Grandma Minnie sent them outside in order to hike. When crossing a stream, the ice broke, and dad fell part way into the water. The fear of freezing to death was significant (the temperature was well below zero), so they ran home. Grandma immediately heated some water (they did not have automatic hot water) and put dad into a tub in order to warm him.
Grandma decided to move to Minneapolis (65 miles away), partly to get better education for her children. They moved when dad was entering 8th or 9th grade. Grandma continued to iron clothes for people, and she also rented part of the house to single people. Don Engebretson’s family also moved to Minneapolis.
Dad worked whenever he was not in school, as did his sister. One summer job involved working outdoors for a rich family in Minneapolis. This family arrogantly drove the car out of the garage, and did not care that the car exhausts poured into dad’s face. However, one day they had a problem with their outdoor hose. It was clogged – somewhere. Because it was underground, they planned to dig throughout the front lawn until they found the problem. Dad stopped them from doing so. He carefully measured the hose by diameter, and then let out the water from the front of the hose. He calculated how much of the hose was responsible for the amount of water that had pumped out. He told them where to dig, and sure-enough, it was exactly the place where the hose had been trapped. They did not recognize his brilliance.
Dad attended North High School in Minneapolis. That part of the city was growing rapidly; there was a great variation of students, and there were 600 students in each of the four high school classes. Stories later pronounced that dad graduated first in the class of students, but dad corrected that, and said that he was third in his class, as two Jewish kids were better students than he was.
Dad went to the University of Minnesota for college. He worked for the college restaurant while attending. He took the trolleybus to and from college and home. He took as many classes throughout college as legally allowed, and I never heard that anyone else ever got through that college in three years. At the end of his third year of college he took his one and only athletic class: tennis.
He then attended the University of Minnesota Medical School (four years). He continued to keep a part time job in order to save money for the family.
Following medical school, he was the first University of Minnesota student to attend the two-year internship at Johns Hopkins.
His following residency at the Mayo Clinic allowed him to work with nationally known internists.
He worked for the army in western Texas during the end of World War II, and was given an award for his original treatment of those with rare infections.
He moved to the New Haven region following World War II, which was where mom and her family lived while he was in the military. He worked on the medical faculty at Yale University.
In 1950 dad visited Milwaukee, met the medical leaders at Marquette, accepted their job offer, and then he and mom and the kids moved to Elm Grove, Wisconsin. Dad built the Department of Medicine at Marquette University School of Medicine. He was the first full-time member of the department, the first endocrinologist in the state of Wisconsin, and personally hired the heads of his divisions: cardiology, nephrology, infectious disease, etc. He was a nationally famous endocrinologist, and he did key research (recognized to this day) on thyroid disorder, pancreatic disorder, and malaria.
Many town members were wealthy and conservative; dad was one of the few who voted for John Kennedy and other democrats. One time, the town considered building a public library. At the town meeting the conservatives said that we should not spend money to build a library, since we could all have a library at home. Dad disagreed strongly at the meeting, with great intelligence, and the town built the library (which still exists).
Dad performed magic. He made four, rounded, pieces of paper, and two hats. He put the paper on a table. In a square, he put each piece of paper about 8 inches from the others. He then held the hats, and the four papers magically turned up under one hat. We never figured it out. In addition, dad often played checkers with me, and continued to win even when he had brain damage.
Dad’s mother died, and he drove alone to Minneapolis. He was devastated, as she was kind and hardworking, and was the person who raised dad and his sister.
Dad planned our four-week visit “out west.” One evening mom told him that he was drinking too much alcohol. Dad disagreed with her. My sisters and I said nothing.
At one point he was hospitalized for pancreatitis, which is a severe alcohol-related disorder. When we visited him in the medical hospital, he reached under his mattress and took a drink from a bottle of bourbon (likely brought to him by his secretary/assistant).
Early one morning mom quickly drove to the grocery store to purchase eggs or coffee. She then returned home, parked on the edge of the driveway, and fixed breakfast for dad. After breakfast, dad backed his car out of the garage, and crashed into mom’s car. He did not apologize for hitting her car, but instead got angry with mom for parking in the wide driveway. Other mornings he often backed into our neighbors’ lawn. They eventually used large rocks to protect their lawn.
When I was in college (a thousand miles from home), he continued to smoke cigarettes, and fall asleep in his comfortable chair. One evening his chair lit on fire, and he was passed out. Sara was upstairs, smelled the smoke, and rushed downstairs. She dragged dad out of the burning chair (he was still passed out), and dragged the chair onto the outside grass. The chair was destroyed, and dad continued to deny his alcoholism.
Dad was eventually treated for his alcoholism, and at times tried to stay sober. One pattern was that mom would continue to drink alcohol socially, and would visit the neighbors while dad stayed home sober. His sobriety never lasted long.
At some point he was fired from his job because of his alcoholic deterioration, even though he had been greatly loved and respected.
Dad went to AA. One time he told me that the reasons for drinking were not important. Only sobriety was important. I wish he had continued to attend AA.
One time he was hospitalized in a Wisconsin State Hospital. He called me, in tears, and begged me to remove him from the hospital. I didn’t, but felt guilty.
One time during my fourth year of medical school I convinced dad to come to the hospital and be treated by one of my professors. Dad flew to Rochester, got some evaluation, and was discharged shortly. The doctor found bad brain damage and hopelessness.
Dad went home. One evening in January 1974 he told mom not to come to bed that night. Mom slept downstairs, and in the morning, she went up to their bedroom. Dad was dead. She discarded a needle, and did not want the authorities to know that he committed suicide. [My mother told this to me several years later.] She then reported his death.
I was attending a class for fourth year medical students, and I was called to the office and informed that dad had died. I took a flight to Milwaukee. I remember entering our old house, and many individuals were well dressed and having serious conversations in the kitchen and other rooms. I avoided them and saw, Sara, one of my two sisters, standing at the edge of the room. I went to her, and we held each other, and cried.
There was a wake in a funeral home. I was fairly flat, but had a kind conversation with one of the sons of the Peterson family, whom I had babysat. An employee of the funeral home approached my mother and told her to pay the bill. I joined the situation, and firmly told him that my mother was grieving, and would pay the bill, and that he needed to leave. He left.
At the funeral service the minister spoke extremely superficially, and said nothing personal about dad. I was very upset at the service, and I did not stay around the church to speak with people. Despite dad’s horrible last few years, hundreds of people attended his funeral.
