Richard Lindo and Mareva Lindo

00:02 Okay. My name is Richard Lindo my friends call me Toby and have her almost all my life. I'm 78 years old. Today is November 12th 2020. I'm sitting in my apartment on the southside of Chicago on Des Plaines and my interview partner is my daughter Arava Victoria sour Lindo.

00:34 Thank you. My name is Maria Belen. Do I am a guest now 32 on today's date is November 12th 2020. We are on the southside of Chicago and my dad's home and I'm here with my dad so he'll end up.

01:00 And that's about it so Dad.

01:07 Tell me a little bit about your childhood. What's your best memory of that time and maybe also the worst earliest memories almost are riding on a train.

01:25 And

01:27 I remember riding with my mother to Connecticut.

01:32 During the war to visit her sister.

01:38 And then I remember.

01:41 When I was six years old walking past a steam engine and getting on a train in Watertown and riding by myself down to New York City and getting off the train in the lower level of Grand Central and walking up.

02:01 To meet my grandfather

02:06 The first time I ever came to Chicago.

02:12 Where's on the 20th century women?

02:15 I feel like I want to jump ahead because I didn't expect you to talk about drains, but I did kind of expect you to talk about your grandparents cuz I know they were really important to you. So do you want to talk a little bit about them? What were they like?

02:37 My mother's parents were they adopted her? So even though through them I can claim to be descended from Peregrine White. I can't say that by Blood but my grandmother's maiden name was white and

02:59 She both of my sets of Grandparents were born when Queen Victoria was still alive. And because my father was in the war from the very beginning of it really just after I was born in 1942 until he came back in the spring of 1945. So I lived with my mother and with her parents in Watertown and they were very important to me. They had no natural child of their own in a way. I was their child as well and they were wonderful my

03:47 Fathers parents lived in New York City

03:51 And they were

03:54 It was it was like City people and country people they were so different one from the other person. My father was born in Panama and my mother was born in Canada. So I guess I feel that makes me an American.

04:12 You mentioned your parents a little bit. But do you want to talk a little bit more about what your parents are like?

04:22 Well, my mother Sharon was.

04:29 She was an orphan.

04:32 For a considerable part of her life. She was abandoned by her natural parents when she was pretty young. I think maybe six or seven years old and the grandparents that I knew saw her walking down the street one day as a teenager I decided to adopt her.

04:55 And so she was

05:04 Kind of in a strange way in this little provincial town of Watertown New York where you know, I was growing up. She was friendly with the the well-to-do people in town, but I think she always felt a bit of an outsider because she wasn't you know, she was

05:26 She was new to this area and it was the kind of town that if you didn't go up there if you had family there. I know she used to have a subscription forever to the New Yorkers. I think she was wanting to be and trying to be a little more sophisticated than she was and my father.

05:49 I was lucky to be alive. He landed on.

05:56 His name his name was Richard and

06:00 At the end of the war they called him lucky Lindy because he was on the beach in Africa and on the beach in Sicily and on the beach at D-Day but 10 in the morning and he managed to get through the war without any Serious injury.

06:17 And I think partly because

06:21 He had been buying large of success as an officer in.

06:27 In the Army maybe he thought those methods of child-rearing, you know, those methods of dealing with his subordinates would apply very well to his children and I was sort of a a football between my two parents and I'm the oldest in 5 years older than any of my siblings and so I serve got tossed back and forth and generally there was

06:59 You know being that football at wasn't very comfortable for much of my life.

07:08 And those memories are very deep with me. I know that when you try to succeed in life, you really trying to succeed for your parents. And if you can't do it the easiest way to avoid failure is not to try.

07:37 So

07:40 The cast of the most wonderful experiences of my life have been those occasions when I tried my very best and succeeded.

07:51 And I wish there were more of those experiences, but I'm trying to go forward in my life rather late in it trying to do every last thing I can do to be successful with the things. I'm doing. Can you give an example of like being tossed back and forth like what does that mean?

08:14 Well

08:17 For some reason for my father it was necessary for me.

08:23 To be unsuccessful. And for example, when when I was barely old teenager, my father named one of his businesses for my three siblings Stella can Steve Lisa and Candy, it was a pretty good reflection of the pecking order in the family, which did not include me except as a sort of a black sheep. And I remember when I was at Cornell inviting my dad to visit me there where he had gone where I went to the same Prep School the same College in the same fraternity that he had gone to as a boy.

09:18 And I had set the weekend up so that there was nothing he could have ject to the entire weekend and when he left.

09:28 He said some very negative things to me. And I said as I saw the car go down the driveway now, I know that it isn't my fault that I failed you.

09:45 I know that's a very deep well.

09:53 I was estranged from my father for most of the next 20 years except for weddings and funerals, but about 20 years later there was an effort on my part and I'm his of reconciliation.

10:08 And it was then.

10:17 That he told me.

10:21 He was at my graduation.

10:31 How screwed up?

10:33 M1b

10:39 Yeah, it's ended your graduation to to from from Cornell. But but didn't never tell you you let he let it lie and let you believe that you weren't there. I said you weren't at my graduation. Yes, I was.

11:00 But after 20 years of estrangement

11:04 Love to taste.

11:09 Yeah.

11:12 So you've mentioned your siblings you want to talk a little bit about them. Just just so you know, I called because they were all accepted and I was not

11:29 I was probably closest for that reason to my little sister Lisa because she had both physical and somewhat emotional problems. And so she was somewhat rejected particularly by my father because she didn't fit the image of the child that you wanted to have. So Lisa and I were maybe a little closer.

11:55 I feel very close to my brother now and a little less so to my sister candy because she was so close to my father and you can sort of feel the vibration sticker If we talk about memories of the family.

12:17 Very close to him how many years towards the end of his life and she was candy.

12:28 So I know that your time at Choate mental out to you. Do you want to talk a little bit about that? Like you want to share any favorite stories from your days and high school or Prep School?

12:42 I wrote Queen along quite a few thousand words about my experience at church and at the very beginning out of it. I love it. I said she taught us how to act not how to feel.

13:02 And so I was pretty conscious of that at the time or so looking back on it. Now one of my really wonderful memories of it was just of a an athletic Triumph wear.

13:21 More so than I had ever done before or even after one day. We were competing with our enemies from Deerfield and they have been feeding us in Cross Country for many many years are coach used to say to us. They put their pants on one leg at a time just to feel like hey, we got a chance against them. But for some reason that day, I was inspired to do quite a little bit better than I had ever done before and this friend of mine and I finished first and set a new school record. We beat those bastards from Deerfield if we beat them in cross-country and I think football and soccer so it was there was a happy time in a very small way and I remember the feeling sore almost wondering what had come over me.

14:21 But it's a test in life and you can learn from kind of pushing yourself probably later in my life. The closest that I ever came to that was running.

14:34 1 time in New Hampshire back in the 90s when I ran three marathons and I ran for about 10 miles in the Hills above Wolfeboro with Steve's wife Sigrid who was a great Runner and it was just a wonderful we were competing with each other. But at the same time kind of trying to push each other and help each other and we finished.

15:00 Pretty well exhausted, but just feeling wonderful about how well we had done you no to the Risen to the challenge.

15:11 Yeah that took Deerfield rivalry. So this is that doesn't mean that you can go back to your years between high school and when you met mom, but you have a lot of stories that you like to tell you a lot of stories in general, but I think you have certain stories that you know, people may be approved you tell how many times you're a Storyteller. I think probably the one I've heard you tell the most is that it's a very classic story of yours is the story of how you met mom.

15:50 Do you want to tell that story?

15:55 I can I can certainly do that.

15:59 Your godfather Peter dog and was no longer with us and hasn't been for many many years, but he and I were very close in the 70s and early 80s and he suggested I attend a workshop That was supposed to change my life called actualizations and I went to it and I went into a room on a Thursday evening in July of 1981 one of about 60 people and I was the only one wearing a suit and a tie.

16:33 This was at the Commodore Hotel on 42nd Street in New York City. And so the first thing they asked us to do was take 10 labels five of them sort of positive personal attributes and five- and keep and keep walking around the room without saying a word to anyone and get rid of those 10 labels.

16:55 And I ended up with more a loose than anyone else in the room. And the next thing they asked us to do was choose a group of about a dozen people that you want to be part of and you know, go sit down with those other 11 people. So I looked around the room and I saw these two very tall attractive women.

17:21 And I know I'm going to see if I can get in that group and I walked over actually ran I think and got into it and then they said okay, the next thing you're going to do by I contractor won't pick up person in this group and you have 2 and 1/2 minutes to tell him your life story and they will have 2 and 1/2 minutes to tell you there's so by I contact alone. I chose Sharon sour

17:52 And it's been all downhill ever since 38 years. How about that?

18:04 And then I think like what by the end of the weekend or something like some people who had bonded from that group you all like went out on the town if you want to tell that story the next after the workshop was over. I came back to New York and we went out to dinner and if there was more than one of the friends we had made during this Workshop who predicted that we would be married and we were married about 15 months later in New Haven on October 2nd a beautiful beautiful day at Trinity Church on New Haven green.

18:43 Anna's mom, Sorry. I was just was there a moment when you realize that you wanted to marry her.

18:55 I'm not sure it was a moment necessarily but we were we certainly formed a fairly close relationship during the course of that workshop. And so she wanted a one-way ticket out of New York. I lived in Connecticut at the time and she moved in with me about 3 months later. And so we shared a home for those 10 minutes. Am I right that we have about 10 minutes left ear.

19:26 I think that to call. Oh, okay. Great. I told one. Sorry about that. Okay.

19:33 I thought I would like to talk about some people that made a difference in my life if that's okay. Okay. Alright.

19:44 Well

19:48 Well, one of the most important people was the farmer.

20:00 Who lived at the end of our driveway?

20:06 When I was six I met him for the first time.

20:12 And not long after that he put me on this tractor.

20:18 Javier's explain to me how to drive it and I did so not too long after I rode by myself down to New York City 300 miles to visit my grandfather. I also got to drive a vehicle. It was in the car wasn't a boat but it was a tractor and somehow those experiences probably convinced me that I could do some pretty strange things and Bob Waltz was

20:52 A small D Democrat has he used to say?

21:01 And he knew

21:04 He was a very wise man he could see what was going on in my life between my father and me, but he never attempted to supplant my father in any way. He was a brilliant man.

21:22 One time he saw that his older son. You're a little younger than I we were kind of getting into an event in the house and brought out some boxing gloves when you said okay go at it and they were you know, big stick boxing gloves would basically War each other out and eat it too. We did it.

21:49 I remember one time he had a vegetable garden and he was a Dairy Farmer, but he had a vegetable garden out back and used occasionally get his little 22in or shoot at farm and you know getting into the the veggies one time you picked the gun up which was a very short barrel rifle and shot the end of his finger off. That was that he had inadvertently extended slightly over the barrel of the gun and we live 3 miles from the nearest town and it stays with me to this day. He went inside scrubbed his finger bandaged it up and that was the end of that.

22:39 Do other people that have?

22:43 Been a wonderful part of my life.

22:48 Are dick almond.

22:50 The Emeritus professor of English the Marxist Emeritus professor of English Wesleyan University that I met at the poker table and have played poker with her most of the rest of the almost 50 years that I've known him.

23:08 And he's just in spite of the fact that he's a socialist in a radical the almost exact opposite of myself. We've had a wonderful friendship all these years and battled it out on the, you know at the poker table and the dinner table and we've had such we shared so many wonderful memories and

23:40 The other is

23:43 Dan Avers who I met totally by accident, so I'm sailing into Montrose Harbor here in Chicago one day when morava was 3 months old and we were Enchanted Sharon and I buy this 1936 Loop that we saw sailing into the harbor and we went home the next morning. I picked up the Tribune and did something I've never done before which is go to classifieds and look at sailboats for sale. And there was the boat that we had seen the night before.

24:29 So I called Dan called him found that his name was Dan Avers, and I said not interested in buying a boat. But out of curiosity. What are you asking and he said 12,000 but I'll come down and I said I'm not interested in buying about me said I'll go partners with you when I said I'm not interested in buying a boat, but I'd love to go for a sail. That's when I stepped on a banana peel.

25:01 That led to 32 years of my life on the water in Chicago and that's been in many ways the best part of my life.

25:15 And when

25:18 Dan was had become a widower his wife died when the early 2000s he became kind of a menace to himself mostly to himself or even to this very well cuz she worked with him for a time trying to help him to manage his Affairs, but he went through a quarter of a million dollars of his own money buying sweepstakes tickets. So we sent him to Thailand to get them away from T scammers and he did in his early 80s by one way ticket to Thailand to live with a friend of mine Glenn Medeiros.

26:04 For the rest of his life

26:07 And he the stories of him. There are pretty legendary. I mean, you have to understand him. You would have to look at him as WC Fields younger brother. I mean he was just a curmudgeon from beginning to end and he spoke to me for the last time 3 years after he died.

26:31 Clam, buried half his ashes in the Gulf of Siam and brought the other half back to me and I put them on the Shelf in my library and I didn't do what I should have done which was buried them in Lake, Michigan.

26:46 But in the summer of 2015 I borrowed a book from the Chicago Library which has six million books in it. This book was one of Joseph. Conrad's novel was the first one who ever wrote called almayer's Folly and I brought it home and when I opened it a postcard fell out of it addressed to Daniel C Avers.

27:13 The man on Whose ashes were resting on my library shelf and although the postcard was not addressed to me was addressed to him. It was clearly a message to me to get my ass in gear and police deal with his ashes which I did probably the next month.

27:35 Yeah, could you a whole whole sitting on the stories of Dan Avers?

27:43 Oh my goodness.

27:47 Thank you for sharing, you know about those three important people.

27:53 So I guess this is a good time to ask you about you've mentioned a couple of times when you brought up the people that you just talked about.

28:05 Differing opinion you have a penchant for surrounding yourself with people who don't necessarily or often times extremely differently from you like Mom and I don't have a lot of the opinion that you have your best friend. Jenna Coleman thinks very differently from your brother, you know, like a lot of people who are close to you think think quite differently from you want to talk about that. I recently spoke with a fellow who's a national columnist. He's an Emeritus professor of History. I believe at the University of Chicago. His name is Charles Lipson. I wrote him to compliment them on one of his essays.

28:56 And he he wrote me back and we ended up chatting a bit and he is a republican living in Hyde Park and I said, well, I just I really wanted to meet someone who might in Chicago have an opinion similar to mine and he told me about a panel show a TV show he was on at one time and they asked him this question. Did he have many friends in Hyde Park who thought the way he did, you know, he being a Republican and he said no he said as a matter fact, I'm a minority in my own family. I think if you want to have any friends at all in Chicago, you pretty much have to be prepared to interact with people who have different points of view then then I do.

29:53 I have been a republican all my life and I can honestly say that it would be fair to call me to use the term an old Upstate New York term called a black Republican which did not mean that you were a black person who wanted to the Republican Party admit that you voted like the black people did after Abraham Lincoln done until after you are so I voted for a lot of terrible Republicans. I'll be the first one to admit it and the only reason I did it is they were better in my opinion than the alternative. Okay.

30:31 Well what an unexpected answer, I think that there's more that could be said about that, but we'll leave it at that. There's other things that I would like to talk about.

30:47 I wouldn't mind talking about you. Yeah, I was going to say what what was I like as a baby?

30:54 Where is a young child the first thing that happened when you were born? Cuz we did not take any test. You were born in our living room and we didn't know until you were born whether you are a boy or a girl and I had pretended to be indifferent to whether you were a boy or girl even though when you popped out and I realized you were a girl.

31:24 I started to cry.

31:26 I was so relieved.

31:31 That I wouldn't have to deal with another son.

31:37 And

31:39 I have many wonderful memories of you. I can remember taking you to school.

31:46 Every single day pretty much and

31:50 Usually when we went up to the school when it was in Evanston, and we would pass one of these.

31:58 Bums reaching for a handout, you know always usually at the corner of Devon and McCormick and if we had a little something to spare we always gave it to him. Well you and I were practicing your German vocabulary on the way up there. And I remember the first time you were at the Helm of the Robert Allen and

32:28 I decided to see if you could dock the boat and you managed to do it so successfully that it didn't touch the dock at all and you brought it in exactly butanol. Boom right there, you know foot from the dock. And you said what do I do now? And I said jump off and tie it up and you did and I have so many wonderful memories of us making music and I think when you were very little and we were singing sea shanties, you probably thought that was kind of a goofy thing to do but now you're maybe one of the most well-known singers of sea shanties certainly in Chicago and you've been invited to sing them as far east as

33:14 As you know, yapoort Portsmouth and Boston and and Mystic Seaport, and as far west is San Francisco. So that's been a wonderful thing to share Is Your Love of music and even though I'm not a musician, I love to sing with you.

33:39 Follow up questions about me.

33:43 But yeah, I was going to ask for like a few questions that you might already answered about like what you were most proud of and I think you kind of touched on this already like people who had a big influence on your life. Right? Like what do you feel most grateful for in your life?

34:15 I think probably my health because I am truly dumbfounded that I'm in my 79th year in the last time. I was in the hospital overnight. I was 3 years old in Lima Peru having my tonsils out. I don't know what I've done to deserve that. I'm not a health not I have been.

34:40 Healthy most of my wife despite the fact that I've probably eaten too much for a good deal of it and certainly drunk more bourbon than anybody should be allowed to drink. I'm drinking less now than I used to even a year ago and it so I haven't given up on improving myself, but I think I'm just I'm truly lucky to be as healthy as I am. And here we are in this the year of covid-19.

35:36 Is pretty good for a person my age and Zendaya so I feel very very fortunate for the all of those things another lucky window.

35:53 What are some of the most important lessons you've learned in life?

36:02 I think I touched on this before because it's a lesson that I have needed to learn all my life. It's clear to me that.

36:13 This is the most effective way not to fail is not to try so I really

36:23 I think I'm still trying every single day to keep trying to do things that either are difficult emotionally or intellectually. Maybe it's

36:38 To reach out to a person like Eric Johnstone who really with whom I had a very difficult interaction only 4 days ago, but

36:55 And he's a person who was home. I don't agree much about politics, but he's a wonderful person and I can bring a lot to the organization that I started four years ago. And so I'm going to believing in Miracles as I do. I'm going to try to salvage my relationship with him and with with as many other people as I can because the most wonderful thing that really has happened to me has happened through being on the water as I touched on before here in Chicago. I've met so many great people and

37:39 The boat somehow enables me to get to know people in a way that's increasingly difficult.

37:51 Yeah.

37:56 What are you most proud of in your life?

38:02 If you haven't already touched down there.

38:06 Well might be you.

38:14 And I'm certainly proud of the fact that in this very difficult to your I'm doing my best to

38:24 Support and leave the organization. I started to teach kids about the river and the lake and boating and boat building.

38:34 And at the same time doing my best to help my wife.

38:39 In Hawaii

38:41 Ask re-establish your career and her life.

38:46 5000 miles away and while I'm doing that try to help her brother is living with me now.

38:56 I'm pretty proud of that.

39:01 How would you like to be remembered?

39:10 Weather party

39:12 Like the one

39:16 We shared.

39:19 That night in the courtyard.

39:25 Is there anything that you've never told me that that you would like to tell me now?

39:34 Well, I'm going to ask you if you would like to hear about two women.

39:42 Or each at the time I was involved with them were married to other people.

39:50 Before

39:52 I ever met your mom. Okay, but with each of whom I spent the most magnificent weekend in Canada won at the Chateau Frontenac in Quebec City and the other in Toronto. Do you wish to know any more about this or no? Well, I can say this if if I had to classify these two wonderful women.

40:26 One of them probably in conventional terms would be regarded as a bad woman or a vixen.

40:35 Even though she looked as innocent as and as pure as the driven snow and the other was a very good woman really, but what I guess I would like to share with you is how

40:49 Important it is no matter how difficult it is for men to understand women if you can at least experience.

41:01 Women in the way that I did. Thanks to Canada and the experiences. I had you must understand the range of personality of feelings of ability to respond. You don't know yourself unless you can see yourself within the framework of a relationship with another person. So although I've had a lot more relationships with men in my life than with then with women these two wonderful experiences that I had.

41:37 Allowed me perhaps to understand women a little better than I otherwise would

41:46 An unexpected way to end this. Thank you Dad.

41:53 Thank you morava.