kuniform

Ten years ago today my grandfather, Benjamin Berger died. He was an extremely cool guy in his youth. Even though he spent the last 15 years of his life fighting Parkinson’s disease and other diseases that would lay most folks out quick, flashes of his personality would emerge from time to time and you would realize how much we were missing out everyday that illness ate him up.

He and his brothers owned a club called the Latin Quarter in prohibition era Chicago, and he eventually moved to Wisconsin, married my grandmother, and the rest is history.

One of my favorite stories about him is when he taught my mother to drive. She got in the front seat, he got in the back, and acted as though she were his chauffeur. At one point when she ran over a stop sign, he told her to back up the car, and calmly got out of the car. He picked up the stop sign, stuck it back into the ground, got into the back seat, and continued on with the ‘lesson.’ He was a funny, funny guy. Love ya, gramps.