The scenic route

“The Longest Route” (Winter/25) reminded me of the following. My wife grew up in Cleveland Heights, Ohio. One day many years ago, I was standing in her parents’ front yard talking with two nephews (19 and 21). I said I was going to give them a geography quiz: If you go down the street to the traffic light and turn left, you are on Mayfield Road (US 322) heading west toward downtown Cleveland. After about two miles you go down a huge hill. What is the geographic significance of the hill? They had no idea. (If you keep heading west, after about 1,400 miles, you will get to Denver, and all that way you will not see a hill as high as the one you just came down.)

My suburban street is only a mile long, but some of the locals know it is the only street that connects Northwest Highway with Rand Road. Most of them have no idea that Northwest Highway is US 14. (It heads west from Chicago and dead-ends into Yellowstone National Park. The last few miles it is the same road as US 20.) Rand Road is US 12, which starts in Detroit and heads west to Chicago; Madison, Wisconsin; Minneapolis; and on to the West Coast. Two years ago my neighbor told me of his plan to rent a motor home and take the family on vacation to Yellowstone. I said that was an easy trip: Just go down to the end of the street, hang a right, and follow the US 14 signs. He had no idea what I was talking about.

David Shaffer, MBA’71
Mount Prospect, Illinois

The new University of Chicago Magazine arrived today, and I have read Mary Quade’s (AB’93) essay on Route 20—very good.

I have been by where she lives, as well as on most of US 20 in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York. Ashtabula County, Ohio, doesn’t look much like Appalachia—much more like Dairy Belt southern Wisconsin—but it is part of some governmental designation of the Appalachian region. Lake County, where Quade lives, is outside this boundary despite the bluffs along Lake Erie. In upstate New York, Route 20 goes along the northern end of the Finger Lakes area, which is definitely Appalachia; Cooperstown, where the Baseball Hall of Fame is located, is in that area, just a few miles off Route 20.

Quade is certainly right about the significance of the hospitals on the east side of Cleveland—also about Yellowstone and other Western scenic areas Route 20 (in reality, whatever the National Park Service calls it) crosses. One major cultural amenity she doesn’t mention, also on the east side of Cleveland, is Severance Hall. I have been to many concerts there. Among other things, it has a quote from Plato on the wall: “Music is a moral law.” No one seems to know where in Plato’s dialogues it comes from. This sounds like a U of C–type question.

One final point: US Route 20 goes through a lot of the greatest farmland in the world, in Illinois, Iowa, and eastern Nebraska.

Thorn C. Roberts, AB’65
Elizabeth, West Virginia

While I enjoyed Mary Quade’s essay about US 20 in the Winter/25 issue of The University of Chicago Magazine, a key fact about that route was never mentioned: The highway is the officially recognized Medal of Honor Highway for the United States. You won’t have to look very far to find numerous articles about the gentleman responsible for achieving this recognition: a central Oregon retired US Army lieutenant colonel, Dick Tobiason.

Tobiason achieved this great honor on behalf of many veterans, fallen and still living. It’s a life’s work to be proud of—and fulfills a promise he made to the late Bob Maxwell, a Medal of Honor recipient. Signs commemorating numerous Medal of Honor recipients are located along US 20 from coast to coast.

Kent M. McLean, SM’76
Redmond, Oregon

Ecological expenses

I read with considerable interest in the Winter/25 issue about the new Institute for Climate and Sustainable Growth (“A Fine Balance”). I was dismayed to learn that the new institute has no ecological component. In 1997 ecological economist Robert Costanza and colleagues estimated that the annual contribution of natural ecosystem services to the world’s economy was about $33 trillion, while the total global gross national product was around $18 trillion. In other words, were humans to attempt to replace the ecological services provided by nature to us for free, the cost would require tripling worldwide expenditures. In the intervening quarter century, the importance of natural ecological services has, if anything, increased.

The consequence is that we cannot realistically deal with climate and economic growth without incorporating the study of nature’s ecological services. Not doing so will surely lead to failing to reach the goals of the new institute.

Roger A. Powell, PhD’77
Ely, Minnesota

Classroom presence

I participated in a Daniel J. Boorstin American Civilization seminar while working toward my PhD in American history (“Daniel J. Boorstin,” Alumni News Snapshots, Winter/25). The photo shows Professor Boorstin with much more hair on his head than when I was one of his students in 1968. His bow ties were not clip-ons but actual ones that he tied. He would come into the room with an attaché case. It was not full of notes or papers—instead, it contained his ever-present pipe, tobacco, and a piece of fruit or a small sandwich. The pipe was never lit during the seminar times, but he always held it in his hand, tapping it as he spoke or listened to the students. Professor Boorstin was one of the most interesting and brain-challenging educators that I had the pleasure of working with during my time at the University of Chicago.

Edward Mazur, PhD’74
Chicago

Hitting the books

My Y2K reading list (“Book Talk,” Alumni News Snapshots, Winter/25):

• The Pelican Brief and The Firm, both by John Grisham
• Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom
• Leap Over a Wall: Earthy Spirituality for Everyday Christians by Eugene Peterson
• Themes from the Minor Prophets by David Hubbard
• From Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life by Jacques Barzun
• Who Moved My Cheese? An Amazing Way to Deal with Change in Your Work and in Your Life by Spencer Johnson
• Listening for God, Vol 1: Contemporary Literature and the Life of Faith by Paula J. Carlson and Peter S. Hawkins
• The Force of Character: And the Lasting Life by James Hillman

Terry Cathcart, AB’70
Ishpeming, Michigan

Early risers

Yes, I saw and enjoyed numerous dawns over the lake back in graduate student nights of the early 1970s (“Early Shift,” UChicago Journal, Winter/25). At that time the illustrious geography department and map library occupied Julius Rosenwald Hall, on the quadrangle dominated by Harper Library. It is in the neo-Gothic style of neighboring buildings. And in that spirit, there is a battlement tower of three levels. The lower two are hexagonal spaces big enough for a chair and desk and lit by six arrow-slit windows. The top is outside and reached by a built-in ladder. It is a battlement good for pouring down boiling oil onto, for example, professors.

I returned from overseas fieldwork to the geography department around 1970. No one in living memory had ever used the tower for an office, but I did—with a pretty big desk and two chairs moved into the next-to-highest level of the tower. I habitually worked all night. I climbed up top to enjoy the sun setting over the almost endless checkerboard of streets and westward over the Great Plains.

James Osborn, AM’69, PhD’72
Portland, Maine

It was the fall of 1962. I had been anxiously awaiting responses to my medical school applications. My first interview invitation summoned me to New York. Hotels and taxis were outside of my price range. The New York parents of a girl in my dorm graciously offered me a room. I had to leave early in the morning to take the Illinois Central commuter train downtown to catch the O’Hare shuttle. As I passed the president’s house with my little suitcase, George W. Beadle was outside in his garden, tending the corn plants on which his research was based. He looked up and saw me, saying, “I hope you’re not leaving us.” That was a lovely send-off for an ultimately successful trip. I went to medical school at the University of Chicago.

Nada Stotland, AB’63, MD’67
Chicago

Satisfied customer

I thought your Winter/25 issue was the best I’ve ever read. The David S. Tatel, JD’66, article (“A Judge’s Journey”) had me in tears. I ordered a copy of his book for my attorney son and his attorney girlfriend. Putting the artist Melanie Deal, AM’78, (“Pattern Play”) and the travel essay (“The Longest Route”) alongside the science story (“Engineering Excellence”) was a great mix.

Jean Bundy, MFA’02
Anchorage, Alaska

A mentor’s legacy

Nearly two decades ago, I sat on a bench in a New York City subway station with a slim volume in my lap: German Jews: A Dual Identity by Paul Mendes-Flohr. In a scant 150 pages, the book challenged the idea that the “German-Jewish symbiosis” was merely a fantasy or a failed experiment. Drawing on the philosopher Franz Rosenzweig, Mendes-Flohr argued that from the 18th century onward German Jews sought to create a proverbial Zweistromland—a “land of two rivers,” like the region between the Tigris and Euphrates—a culture shaped by the confluence of German and Jewish traditions.

I looked up Mendes-Flohr’s email address and wrote to introduce myself. His reply came swiftly and revealed that the florid Mendes-Flohrian style wasn’t limited to his academic writing: “With appreciation for your missive of January 3rd,” it began. Was he for real?

Indeed he was. By fall I was sitting in a seminar room at the University of Chicago learning from this remarkable man who would become not just my PhD adviser but, as German academic tradition puts it in a manner befitting the intimacy of this relationship, my Doktorvater.

By conventional standards, he was a terrible academic adviser. I would pester him to read a chapter of my dissertation, and when he finally did, it was with excessive generosity. He rarely critiqued my work. Instead, after reading a draft, he approached me one day in the library, kissed me vigorously on the cheek, and said, “You’re a poet!” He valued the spirit of my work more than its academic precision.

An aging hippie and old soul with a penchant for linen peasant shirts, Mendes-Flohr was committed above all to the humanistic ideals he felt embodied Judaism’s highest form. His mentorship was radically human, never hierarchical—a genuine I-Thou encounter, in keeping with the philosophy of his most beloved subject, Martin Buber. My Doktorvater taught me about the synergistic potential of seemingly split loyalties, the complexity of debates over Zionism through the decades, and the ethical legacy of Buber and his intellectual circle.

In one of the last “missives” I received from him—just days before Rosh Hashanah and weeks before his death—Mendes-Flohr lamented the state of our “tormented world” and expressed longing for a “path of peace.” This longing weighed heavily on him, and the lack of progress toward that horizon perhaps hastened the inevitable. That and his weak—albeit very big—heart.

Rachel Seelig, AM’09, PhD’11
Cambridge, Massachusetts

To read an obituary for Paul Mendes-Flohr, see Deaths.—Ed.

Fondly remembered

I saw the death of Howie Aronson, professor in the Departments of Slavic Languages and Literatures and Linguistics, the Committee on Jewish Studies, and the College, listed in your latest issue (Deaths, Winter/25). I met Howie in 1969 at a family friend’s party. He was a draft counselor while the Vietnam War was raging. I was a 16-year-old long-haired hippie junior at U-High. I told him I was a pacifist and opposed to the war. He told me to start building my case as a conscientious objector. I did so. I asked him to review my application. After I registered for the draft, my request was granted. In the last year of the draft lottery, I drew a 300-plus number and was not drafted to serve in a noncombat role.

Howie was a nice guy who looked as if he could have been the brother of my father, Martin P. Schulman. Both were brilliant men. May they rest in peace.

John Schulman, LAB’70
Bradford, Massachusetts

Bill Callahan, 1946–2025

I write to share with the alumni community that William Joseph Callahan passed away on January 14, 2025, at the age of 78. Born in Chicago, Bill spent his formative years in Hyde Park, attending St. Thomas the Apostle for grade school. He later graduated from Loyola University, where he majored in English.

Bill’s first professional job was teaching English and math at St. Thomas the Apostle. In parallel, he worked part time as a bartender at the Woodlawn Tap, a position that would come to define his life for the next 56 years. Under the mentorship of its founder, Jimmy Wilson, Bill transitioned from bartender to manager and ultimately became the beloved bar’s owner after Jimmy’s passing.

The Woodlawn Tap, nestled in the heart of the University of Chicago community, was more than just a business to Bill. It was a place where he became known for his sharp wit, generosity, and unparalleled ability to connect with people. A true judge of character, Bill treated everyone with the same respect and kindness, regardless of their background. He was a stabilizing presence in the lives of many, with a remarkable capacity to listen and engage with both grand philosophical discussions and everyday exchanges, which made life feel richer.

Three years ago Bill sold the business to his dear friend Matt Martell, AB’95, and retired, though he never quite lost the draw of the bar. He missed the lively conversations, the energy of being behind the counter, and the joy of connecting with friends old and new. He was a lover of baseball, an avid reader, and always open to book recommendations, eager to share his favorite stories and instill a love for good literature in his children. His greatest passions, however, were travel and food, particularly discovering new restaurants and bars, passions matched only by his delight in sharing those experiences with family and friends. In his presence, one would never be short a solid belly laugh and easy, comfortable companionship—as I’m sure many readers remember.

Kristen Callahan Alyn
Pacific Palisades, California

Corrections

In Winter/25, we misidentified the book for which David S. Tatel, JD’66, read the audiobook prologue and acknowledgments. It was his own memoir, Vision: A Memoir of Blindness and Justice (Little, Brown, 2024).

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