PAUL HABER STORIES

1949

Glenview, Illinois. A suburb of Chicago.

 

Young Paul Haber frantically peddled his bike as afternoon shadows yielded to dusk. Rounding a street corner in a middle-class neighborhood, he slowed near one of the driveways. The familiar blue sedan parked there indicated he had lost the race home. He U-turned and resumed peddling back from where he’d come. His deep, dark-eyed gaze and emotionless face defied the seriousness of the situation.

“I’ll tell him I had to work overtime,” he pondered, “or that I had to lock up.” Paul’s peddling slowed to a casual pace in sharp contrast to the wheels spinning in his mind. “Where do I go? What do I do? What the hell!”

Paul’s summertime job at Willow Hill Golf Course had its privileges, among them the unlimited use of the driving range. After completing his cleanup tasks, he spent hours there. He relished the attention and admiration he received from the older golfers for his magnificent golf swing. This was not an excuse good enough to escape the late-for-dinner wrath of his father, Sam Haber. Too many times he’d pummeled Paul for less. Having to explain that working overtime was necessary at Willow Hill made no difference. Admitting to getting totally engrossed hitting driving range balls only worsened Paul’s dilemma.

His thoughts crept back to the parent-teacher conference last year:

Ten-year-old Paul Haber nervously threw a rubber ball against the steps of a Chicago suburb grade school. Inside, his teacher apprised his parents, Sam and Dorothy Haber, of young Paul’s classroom performance. The matronly educator expressed her exasperation. Paul had exceptional test scores. However, his display of boredom overshadowed his potential. “Surly” and “insolent” characterized his behavior, and an utter disregard for the rights of his classmates compounded them.

They rode home in silence, interrupted only by Mrs. Haber’s nervous laughter over the appearance of a large, frightening jack-o’-lantern on a neighbor’s porch. Paul fidgeted in the backseat watching the passing scenery, knowing what lay ten minutes ahead.

Inside the house, Sam offered an old-school counseling session in his son’s bedroom—a close fisted beating. Paul dropped to a fetal position on the bedroom floor in an attempt to protect himself from the pounding blows of his angry father. Sam’s voice rasped in rhythm with the thumping sounds.

“When will you learn, son? Do not bring shame on this family.”

Paul’s younger brother and sister had witnessed it before. They stood outside the bedroom indifferent to the noise inside while Paul’s mother scurried about with make-busy kitchen tasks. As had happened many times before, Sam did not allow her to comfort her troubled son.

Remedy in the 40’s and 50’s for a boy’s errant conduct was through discipline. Good homes produced well-disciplined kids, but bad homes created kids with problems. Often a kid’s bad behaviors caused parental scrutiny. Their child’s conduct was merely a measuring instrument of the parents’ efforts. Beyond a school’s authority and the home’s discipline practices, problem kids had only one other recourse—reform school.

Few diagnostics existed to help young people with disciplinary problems. They had to conform or suffer the consequences. The parents were regularly apprised and expected to take the necessary steps to insure their child’s obedience in school. Most parents responded to the school’s prodding, but some parents more enthusiastically than others. Paul’s dad took it to a soaring level.

That day’s punishment lasted no more than four minutes, but it left bruise marks on Paul’s arms, back, and ribs that lasted a week. He was left alone to soothe his injuries and to think about the activities “justified” by his punishment. The untold emotional scars accumulated, confusing and compounding his vexing personality.

Forget dinner. Bicycling through the streets of the small, northern suburb of Chicago, Paul turned his thoughts to the looming darkness and the logistics of nighttime lodging. Disaffected relationships with neighborhood buddies limited his options. There must be somewhere he could spend the night.

Paul’s meandering found him parking his bike in front of the Sherman Road Presbyterian Church. “Churches are always open, even to Jews, right?” Paul entered cautiously and heard a meeting in progress in the office down the hall. He walked in the opposite direction, passed the water fountain, pushed open a heavy, oak door, and entered the sanctuary. Except for the streetlight reflecting through the massive, stained glass windows, a dark and eerie quiet hung over the room. A slight, familiar smell reminded him of Mom’s furniture polish. The unfamiliar atmosphere did not deter Paul from his mission: sleeping accommodations for the night. Long gone were the days when he snuggled in his mother’s warm arms and bosom before bedtime. Paul picked a middle pew, curled up, and fell asleep unmoved by any reckoning that still loomed.

 

One week later. Lake Forest YMCA.

 

Paul survived the beating for staying out all night. If nothing else, it only reinforced his disregard for physical pain. His dad soon allowed Paul to join him at the YMCA handball courts. Sam and a host of other players employed at Community Builders met there regularly to play the game they loved. Sam picked up Paul after work and took him to the courts to watch and possibly play.

Sam realized that his eldest of two sons had an innate ability for the game. He was blessed with quick reflexes and exceptional hand-eye coordination—and a drive to win.

Sam swelled with pride when young Paul played well enough with the older men to receive their praise. The vicarious channeling of young Paul’s performance at handball provided a perfect boost to Sam’s insatiable ego and his deeply rooted insecurities. Three years from then, a doubles team of father and son competed in the Illinois State Handball Championships. The joy of a father and son handball outing acted as temporary therapy.

Today’s highs portended tomorrow’s lows. The emotional and psychological effects of their father-son relationship would be difficult to measure. Paul’s conduct and Sam’s roller-coaster disposition provided a backdrop of uncertainty and tension at the Haber residence. The instability factor was an eggshell floor covering where the Haber kids walked lightly and rarely expressed themselves.

Paul’s inability to connect behavior with consequence only added to the problem and infuriated Sam to a boiling point. Sam made Paul suffer unimaginable physical abuse. Conversely, a wise and charming Paul understood early on that getting Dad’s approval was a necessary element for any semblance of home tranquility. He employed dishonesty to avoid Sam’s wrath.

The family members felt uncomfortable witnessing the beatings. Receiving them was to be avoided by any means. Sam’s inability to administer effective discipline only seemed to reinforce Paul’s emotionless lack of remorse or guilt. It also cultivated an imaginative and deceitful mind. A vicious cycle of treachery, aftermath, and relative calm prevailed within the walls of the Haber household.

Sam’s tirades and beatings affected everyone in the home. Mrs. Haber was resigned to homemaking chores and obedience. Younger brother, Roger, frail, sensitive, and afflicted with poor eyesight, received a milder version of Sam’s fury. Paul’s toddler sister, Terry, experienced the worst of Sam’s madness much later as a teenager. She admitted her suffering caused years of therapy. To the neighbors and outside acquaintances, the Haber family lived and navigated sublimely in Chicago’s suburbia.

Thus began one aspect of the complicated existence of the most talented and controversial handball player in history.