An Influential Friend

When my Dad was a high school student, he had planned to study medicine. In his teens, he became close friends with a classmate, Casey. Casey convinced my Dad that it would be more interesting for the two of them to study agricultural sciences together.

My Dad and Casey enrolled in the agriculture program in Lithuania. When they fled to the Displaced Persons camps at the end of the war, Dad and Casey continued their studies in Germany. Dad took classes in Stuttgart.

The plan to study agricultural sciences was a wrong turn for Dad. When he emigrated to Brooklyn—and then relocated to urban Chicago—there was little demand for someone with an agriculture degree. Dad therefore retooled himself and went back to school in the States.

Casey emigrated to South America, where he put his agricultural training to use. He became the owner of a coffee-bean plantation. Casey sent photos to my Dad of himself riding horseback around his property and harvesting his crops. Late in the 1950s, Casey sent my Mom a Colombian pocketbook that she carries in this photo.

Do you have a person in your history to whom you attribute a "sea change" in your life? Or is there a moment you can identify as a turning point for you?

Kaunas, Lithuania, June 1941. Casey and my Dad take a break during classes during their first year in college.