Paul and I shared so many things starting in high school. He convinced me to go out for the track team freshman year-he was a high hurdler. The only thing they could find for me was the mile (where my only claim to fame was the number of times I was lapped on the indoor track). I was always amazed he ran hurdles when he had a severe case of asthma and was constantly having to use an inhaler. We were very close all through high school, college and in our 20's-we stood up at each other's weddings, shared the joy of the births of our children, and then our contact grew less frequent after he and his family moved to Hoffman Estates, which in the 70's felt like it was California. We lost contact for many years and then in the late 90's I called him and we re-established contact. He closed his business and he and his wife Marsha moved to Mercer, Wi-way up in the northern most part of the state where they built a house on a lake sometime in the early 2000's. I didn't know he had died until Marsha called me about 6 months later to tell me he died of lung cancer. Paul was a good listener and friend-I miss him.
In a message dated 4/10/2013 8:25:23 A.M. Central Daylight Time, steve@dalealan.com wrote:
Paul Garfield was one of my best friends during high school and college. We
stayed close to him during our early years of marriage and child-bearing,
but after he moved to Hoffman Estates in the early 70's (at that time that
was like driving to California :)) we lost touch. About 10 years ago, I
reached out to him again-he and his wife were living in Barrington -and we
reconnected. Then, he retired about 5 years ago and they moved to a small
town in Northern Wisconsin called Mercer. They had bought a small cottage
on a small lake, tore it down and build a home to live in. We lost touch
after that. His wife called me about 3 or 4 years ago to tell me that Paul
had died the previous November of lung cancer-he had been a lifelong smoker
and when tell-tale signs of cancer started showing up, he refused to see a
doctor until it was too late.
Paul was a hurdler on the HPHS track team and convinced me to go out for the
team freshman year. They didn't know what else to do with my talent (ha ha)
so made me a miler. The most lasting memory I have of Paul is that I had
gotten him a job the summer after we graduated from high school. We were
driving home from Addison , IL where the job was, and listening to WLS radio
when the news came on and the lead story was that Cyrus Garfield, Paul's
father, had been murdered in his office. Paul found out about it on the
radio because his mother didn't know how to reach him at work. His dad was
a CPA but apparently had some underworld dealings with investments in
parking lots and vending machines-Paul knew about the investments but didn't
know about his underworld connections. Apparently Cyrus was murdered by the Chicago mob.
Thank you so much sharing your memories of Paul. I have a very clear image of him in my mind and I was not happy to see, when I first read our class list, that he had died. It's good to hear about him.
I am wondering if anyone knows what happened to Barb Gurnick, who I see died also. I remember riding my bike to her house at a time when all the cicadas were out, squishing them under the bike wheels and screaming the whole way to her house because it was SOOOOO disgusting.
