My Lincolnwood Story- Marc Zissman

“I think I got interested in math and science [because of] the teachers. For me it started in first grade with Mrs. [Margaret] Johnson. She gave us these timed math tests.”

Marc’s parents moved to Lincolnwood from Rogers Park when he was 3 years old. He recalls growing up in Lincolnwood, working at Fannie’s Deli, playing baseball and family traditions. After graduating from Niles West High School in 1981, he moved to Boston to study computer science at MIT and credits his love for math and science to the to the wonderful teachers he had in Lincolnwood schools.

Click here to view the film clip mentioned in the interview of Marc and his sister, Marla, playing at the Sinclair gas station dinosaur at the intersection of Pratt and Lincoln, May 8, 1967.

This interview was recording using Zoom.

The views and opinions expressed in interviews do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Lincolnwood Public Library, including its Board of Trustees and staff.



TRANSCRIPT:

Lev Kalmens  0:00  
My name is Lev Kalmens. I'm an Information Services Librarian at the Lincolnwood Public Library. Today is August 5 2020, and today I'm interviewing Mark Zissman for My Lincolnwood Story, our oral history project. Mark, thank you for joining me, and what is your Lincolnwood Story?

Mark Zissman  0:17  
I grew up in Lincolnwood. My parents moved and they lived in East Rogers Park. They got married in 1962. I was born in 1963. In 1966, when my mother was pregnant with my sister, they moved to Lincolnwood. They moved to a two flat apartment building at the corner of Pratt and Harding. There are nine such buildings right there, right across the street from the schools. We came to Lincolnwood in mid 1966. I lived there; I went to the Lincolnwood public schools, and went to Niles West. I graduated from Niles West and went to college in Boston. I've lived in the Boston area ever since. That's where I got married. That's where my wife and I raised our own children. That's where I've been. I guess my time in Lincolnwood was only about 16 years, but it was the 16 years of my childhood.

Lev Kalmens  1:16  
What do you remember about Lincolnwood growing up?

Mark Zissman  1:20  
It was a really great place for me to grow up. My first memory is when my sister was born, which was in January of 1967. What I remember a lot about that - women spent more time in the hospital then, maybe a week or so in the hospital - my mom was delayed coming back with my sister because of the big snowstorm in January of 1967, which was one of the largest snowstorms Chicago has ever had. It was on January 26. My mother spent another week in the hospital that she wouldn't have otherwise spent. My father and I were on our own. I don't remember a ton of details, but my father was from the old school of fathers who really couldn't...husbands who couldn't cook. I was three and a half years old. I remember going out looking for restaurants, walking to restaurants that were open at the corner of Lincoln and Crawford, and up and down Lincoln Avenue near our house. There was nothing open. We lived in this two family apartment building. It's been explained to me that the landlord of the building, the Josephs family, Mrs. Joseph, took pity on us and fed us a couple of meals until we were able to get around and until my mom came home. It was a lot of snow. I think that you have some video clips, some Super 8 movies, that my father took showing the cars and the school busses that were stuck in the snow that we could see from outside our apartment building.

Lev Kalmens  2:58  
Yeah, and in those clips, you can almost see where the library building is: the site of the current library building.

Mark Zissman  3:10  
That's right. I remember before the library was there was a Pier One. Before it was a Pier One, it was a Jewel grocery store. That wasn't the only place that my mother shopped, but that was one of the places. I'm not sure if we walked over there usually or she drove over there, but I remember being in that store. I remember the gas station across the street, and the dinosaur. The green dinosaur; there was more than one that was part of the Sinclair station. That was a good place to grow up because Pratt and Crawford is really the exact center, more or less, of Lincolnwood. Being so close to the schools - to Todd Hall, to Rutledge Hallm to Lincoln Hall -  was very convenient. We spent a lot of time, not just at the schools, but playing at the various fields and playgrounds that were there. There were a lot of neighborhood boys and girls my age, and there was a lot of time playing together, either on the street, on Harding and East Prairie, or across the street at school.

Lev Kalmens  4:09  
Something that I noticed in that clip of you and your sister playing on the big dinosaur across the street here is how much busier this area seems because there was a grocery store. There were way more cars, and it seemed like there was more of a hustle and bustle than than there is now.

Mark Zissman  4:26  
Yeah, I guess you would know better the way it is now than I would, although I have been to the library a few times. It seemed busy to me, being a little boy and looking out the window from the second floor, out the big picture window, and watching the cars go by on Pratt and and Crawford. Seeing the distance was interesting. My dad would take public transportation get to work. He was an attorney. He worked downtown at a big Chicago bank, and he would always take public transportation. Around dinnertime, my mom would take my sister and me down - we'd walk to the end the of Harding to Harding and Lincoln Avenue, and the bus. I don't know if he sometimes he took the bus all the way downtown. Sometimes he took the bus to the subway, but we'd always wait for him to get off the bus coming home. Lincoln Avenue - the cars going by -  it was interesting that we would sit there and wait for him for 10 minutes. We would sit on this curb, a little bit higher than a curb; that's on what is a cash register store. It was a cash register store, then called Schmaus. I think it still is now. Except now, when I go by there and I see the ledge that we sat on, it looks a lot smaller than I remember. But of course, it's exactly the same concrete ledge in their parking lot. That was one of the things that had been there since the beginning. There was been a restaurant across the street; many restaurants at Harding and Lincoln on the other side of the street. Lou Malnati's, I remember when they came. I remember Gabby Hartnett. We would go there to go bowling. There were other shops associated with that. I think that's been gone for a while. There was a lot of interesting stuff going on on Lincoln Avenue. That's how people got to Lincolnwood right before the expressway came in.

Lev Kalmens  6:18  
You mentioned your father was an attorney. Take me back a little bit about his family, your mother's family; how did they end up in Chicago, if they're from Chicago originally, or immigrated from Eastern Europe?

Mark Zissman  6:30  
Right. My father on his side, he was the first person born in the United States. His parents and grandparents were born in Eastern Europe, in Poland. They came at the turn of the previous century, a 1910 timeframe. They came directly to Chicago because there was a little bit of other family here already. It was natural for them to come. My father's parents were second cousins, so they knew each other, anyway. They came and they lived on the north side of Chicago; they lived on Lincoln Avenue, but much further south where Wrigley Field is today, Lincoln and Southport, that general area. My grandfather had a on that site a used furniture store, and a variety of stores, and also started gradually to accumulate a little bit of real estate around the time of the Depression. Then, they moved further north. My father went to college; he was the first person in our family to go to college. He went to grad school; he became an attorney, went to law school in Boston. They moved gradually further north into West Rogers Park, West Ridge, I guess you would say. When my parents got married being in East Rogers Park was a natural thing. On my mother's side, they were a South Side family. Their family had been here a little bit longer, a couple of generations. They came from Germany and from other Eastern European areas. My mother's father and his whole family was in the paint business, and what's called the paint sundries business. These are all the things like paint brushes and other things you need different from paint. They would sell that stuff to hardware stores, and then hardware stores would sell it to people. They ran that businesses on the South Side. My mom grew up in what's called South Shore, which is a South Side community. It's pretty far south, pretty close to Indiana, actually. My parents met because my mother's aunt knew the neighbors to my father's mother. There was some opportunities for them to connect by chance, and that's what happened. It was a Southside family and Northside family. It was also Jewish. The Southside family that was more German Jewish was what's called Reform Judaism, and they helped found a Reform synagogue down there, that's still there. It's right across from where President Obama lives on the South Side. My father's family was a little bit more traditional. It was in a sense of mixed marriage between a Reform family and a more traditional family. That was a little bit difficult at the time, but interesting. Subsequently, my sister and I both are much more traditional [inaudible]. That's the side that won. But we're mindful of this Reform movement, and of the impact on our mother's side that they had in that community at that time on the South Side.

Lev Kalmens  9:56  
Talk to me a bit about the various family traditions you had growing up.

Mark Zissman  10:01  
My sister and I were for a long time, for 10 years, the only grandchildren on both sides of the family; the only grandson and the only granddaughter. As my wife says that leads to certain sense of entitlement as a child because we were the centers of attention. My mother would have barbecues in the backyard for Memorial Day and July 4; we would do cookouts and so on. There were a lot of Jewish holidays, Passover and the Jewish High Holidays that come in the fall, and Hanukkah that comes into winter, where everybody would come over, and we would eat together. My mother would make these great meals, or we might be at one of my grandmother's house instead sometimes. Outdoor picnics were also great. My great grandparents would come over: my great grandparents, my grandmother of my father's mother's mother, and both of her parents. I can remember that very well, for a long time. We would see them a lot. They lived also in West Rogers Park; we would go to their house, they would go come to our house. It was a big deal. It was just really nice to get everybody together. We got everybody together all the time. It was interesting that both sides of the family, my perspective was, that both sides of the family got along very well. There was a lot of respect, because to me, they were family; but they hadn't known each other all that long when I was little and yet, they got along very well. There was great respect between them. I remember my grandparents worked really hard. My mother's father would come over and sit in the backyard, have a hot dog, and he would fall asleep on Sunday because he was working so hard during the week in a way that I couldn't possibly understand. My father's father, the same thing was true. My father's father had grown up in Poland in a in a house; it didn't even have a floor. It had a dirt floor. To go from that to having your son, my father, go to law school and become a lawyer, and my mother to get a master's degree and become a teacher is a really big step. That's kind of the American dream. It is the American dream. It wasn't obvious to me what was happening or what had happened, what they had achieved, all of them. But it's obvious. It's clear to me now, and it's very impressive.

Lev Kalmens  12:37  
You mentioned your father was a lawyer, and your mother was a teacher. Do you know where she taught?

Mark Zissman  12:42  
She taught in lots of places. What I remember the most is that she taught in the north part of Chicago; there was a place called Lawrence Hall, which was a school for boys. I don't know if it was a high school exactly; it was a place where boys could come who were in trouble. It was at Lawrence and Kedzi, in that general area. She worked there. She had previously been a nursery school teacher also; I remember she did that for a while. After my sister and I were old enough where we could be home alone, that's when she went back to get her master's degree. On her side of the family she and her brother were the first ones to graduate college. She taught until I remember going to college. [Inaudible]

Lev Kalmens  13:33  
Talk to me a little bit about going to the schools here in Lincolnwood, with Todd Hall and all the way going up to Niles West.

Mark Zissman  13:39  
I remember I went to nursery school at the JCC, the Jewish Community Center, which is at Touhy and McCormick near Kedzie. At the time that I went it was actually pretty new. There were a lot of people from Lincolnwood; a lot of kids from Lincolnwood went there. We had a carpool. Different moms would drive on different days, take the kids back and forth. I went there for a couple years, and then started at Todd Hall with all the other kids in the neighborhood. I remember a big bus that took us from Harding and Pratt to Todd Hall, which would have been faster to walk. But that's what they did at that time. I remember all of my teachers there and I have been in touch with, for example, Mrs. Johnson. Mrs. Margaret Johnson. She was a phenomenal first grade teacher. She taught both my sister and me, and that true of many families. My mom and Mrs. Johnson were in touch until just a few years ago when Mrs. Johnson passed away. I remember Mrs. Johnson had a son named Mark. Maybe she looked at me kindly. She was a wonderful person to teach you how to read and to teach you math. She was just an outstanding teacher and I think it was recognized in the school system. But I had lots of outstanding teachers like that. I had [inaudible] teacher called Mr. Niccolo, but she's now Poppy Woodard. She's a teacher now down in Alabama. She taught me third, fourth and fifth grade. In fourth grade and fifth grade, the reason we stayed together was in fourth grade and fifth grade they had something called [inaudible]. I don't remember exactly what that stood for, but they were pods where they taught third, fourth and fifth graders together. They knocked down some walls. It was pod A, pod B, pod C. Miss Niccolo and Mrs. [inaudible] did pod C and I was in that for fourth and fifth grade. It was a multi grade classroom, which was pretty cool. It was very individualized learning. I'm sure it was very experimental at the time. I think they got rid of it. I don't think it lasted very long. It was it was there while I was there. That was pretty interesting. That was a great experience. Ms. Niccolo, I'm still in touch with her. I've actually been down in Alabama and Montgomery where she lives. I've gone out to dinner with her and with her daughter down there. She's finishing up a long career in teaching. Then, that was a great place to be. In Lincoln Hall, I became a sort of a math science person. Although all the teachers were really good, I especially remember Mr. Rubin and Mr. Pollster, Dr. Rogers - Monica Rogers the music teacher - they're just outstanding. When I eventually got into college, I remember Mr. Pollster used to have these different extra credit projects like computing 2 to the 420th power or computing 100 factorial. Back in those days, you had to do it by hand. I never completed either of those questions, but people did. He would grade you or whatever. I finally got to college with access to computers. I printed out both 2 to the 420th power and 100 factorial. I sent them in to Mr. Pollster; it was four years late. I sent them in and asked I know it's four years late, but we please accept this, such as it was. Those were really great science teachers. Mr. Willison is an English teacher, really great English teacher. We had great teachers at Niles West when I was there, 1977 to 1981. It was large already. Then they closed Niles East. They had to split the Niles East kids and sent half to West and roughly half to North. By the time I graduated as a senior, there might have been 700 kids in our graduating class. Almost 3000 kids in the school. I was thinking especially on the science and math teachers - Mr. Hutton or Mr. Martin - and Mrs. Graham, the English teacher I had as a senior, were just outstanding. When I went to college, I was very well prepared. In some cases we were using, at least the first year, the same book that we had used the last year of high school. It was cool to have to have done that it; it made it easier.

Lev Kalmens  18:01  
How did you get interested in math and science in the first place, do you think?

Mark Zissman  18:05  
I think I got interested in math and science because...it wasn't because my family did that. Because my dad was a lawyer, my mom was a teacher, there was no engineering; no science in my family background. I think it's the teachers that do that. It started in first grade with Mrs. Johnson. She gave us these timed math tests. It was interesting. She gave us a lot of different kinds of work we can do that I found kind of interesting. For me, that lasted all the way all the way into high school. It was always interesting, Like Mr. Priven doing these leaf identification things. He would make us take notes, this was in seventh grade. Anybody who had him remembers this, you had to go in and take notes on what he was telling you in seventh grade. About three, four times a year, you would turn those notes in, and he would grade your notes. He's grading you on how well you were paying attention to what he said, and he knew what he told you each day. And then he would turn it back to you: "September 10, you must have been asleep. I don't like this. I don't like this. " That's pretty valuable. It's separate from what subject it is; how to take notes is a pretty valuable skill to have. Mr. Pulser, it sounds crazy, but he would have Guinness Book of World Records contests in class where he would show up and say, "Today, we're talking about part of the Guinness Book; the top the tallest men and the heaviest and the shortest and this and that." Then he would ask us questions about that. You would say, "Well, how important is it to know the facts that are in the Guinness Book of Records? It's not very important, probably." But how important is it to be able to read something and, in some cases, retain the facts so that you have the recall of them later. That is pretty important. Later in high school, in history we would have history teachers that would say, "I don't really care about the facts; I want you to understand the progression of history," which is also important. They're both important. I found that the teachers that I had were pretty clever and pretty creative in how they were able to make sure that we were interested in what we were doing.

Lev Kalmens  20:29  
So you went to college? You said you've been in Boston since college? Was that somewhere you've always wanted to go? How did you end up in Boston?

Mark Zissman  20:38  
I'm not really sure. We visited a few places and the place where I went is a very good engineering university. I guess that was it. They accepted me and I actually still work there. I've never left the Boston area. I work at the university where I went as a freshman although I focus on research, not on teaching. This is where I met my wife. It turned out it was hard to do the kind of work that I do anywhere else. There weren't many places I could do it. We liked it there; it's different. Boston is different. It's older. The community we live in, not that it's that old, was settled in the early 1700s. My wife is a teacher, too. She's done a history of this area, so we understand the history very well. Although our house isn't that old, it's only from the 50s, there are houses here from the 1700s that people still live in. The community has changed. It's not the same as it was, but we kind of like it. It's nice; not too different from Lincolnwood in some ways,

Lev Kalmens  21:47  
Do you still have a connection...do you still have family that lives here in Lincolnwod, in the Chicagoland area?

Mark Zissman  21:52  
In the Chicago area, sure. I have a lot of friends that espeically now we do a lot of Zooming. My family is very involved in the LIncolnwood Jewish congregation. I've been in touch with Rabbi Learfield there. I visit when I'm in town, which hasn't been recently, of course. We did our first ever reunion of our Hebrew school graduating class; it was the 44th year since we graduated. We did it by Zoom. It was going to be in person, but we couldn't do it in person. It was going to be the spring. So we did it by Zoom. It's good to keep in touch with all those folks. I worked for four or five years at a deli on to Touhy called Fanny's. I've been in touch a little bit. That was a defining four years for me in high school. I learned a lot at Fanny's; I learned at least as much at Fanny's for what I would need for the rest of my life, as I did in high school, honestly. That was really great. I'm in touch with folks from there as well. I have close friends that lived in Lincolnwood; a couple still do. One of my friends, Neil, lives just a few blocks from where he grew up. His kids went through all the same schools. His wife teaches at Todd Hall in what what he thinks of as Mr. Coochies' class, the kindergarten class from 40 years ago, 50 years ago. I'm in touch with a lot of those folks. Not everybody but a lot of us.

Lev Kalmens  23:16  
Have you had a chance to bring your own children to Lincolnwood?

Mark Zissman  23:20  
Oh, yeah. My kids know very well. They've both been to the synagogue many times, they've both met Rabbi Learfield. They've led some of the services there. I don't think they've ever been inside the schools, but they know the schools. We pass the high school on the Edens Expressway all the time. Our older son, who's a himself a civil engineer, knows quite a bit about how the north side of Chicago was developed. He went to Northwestern so he spent four years in the area. He knows quite a bit about the history of Evanston, the history of the whole north side in Chicago, how it was developed, how and why they put the expressway where they put it; all the things like that. In some sense, he knows probably more than I do actually about that.

Lev Kalmens  24:05  
You told me you had somewhat of a fascination or like an obsession with local history. You mentioned...was it Fanny's, the place? What are some of the other businesses that you recall from growing up?

Mark Zissman  24:22  
I recall lots of them. Places like the [inaudible], like Gabby Hartman. Fanny's for me was a big thing. The Pier One, the Jewel, and the library itself. [When] I grew up there wasn't a library. There wasn't a fire department. There wasn't even what we call the big park before it was renamed Prosel Park. There wasn't a swimming pool at first. These are all things that were important, and somebody had to do that. It turned out that I grew up right on Harding right across the street from Mrs. Madeline Grant who ultimately became the mayor. When I knew her, and of course I knew her kids, she was one of the movers behind the library in the first place. The library wasn't even where is now; it was in the wedge between Pratt and Lincoln Avenue just a little bit to the West. It was in some other building that had been a bank or something before it moved. I don't even think the library existed as it exists now before I went to college. Everybody would go to the Skokie library; the kids would go to the Skokie library to do homework or the Northwestern library.

Lev Kalmens  25:29  
I believe there was a referendum to approve a library in Lincolnwood in in the very late 70s. I think the library, as an independent building, opened in the early 80s.

Mark Zissman  25:44  
I was already gone. The restaurants - the Ground Round that started as a Howard Johnson's then became a Ground Round - this is at Lincoln Avenue and Crawford. That is now one of the Grossinger car agencies. There was always a Cadillac agency at the corner of Pratt and Crawford, which I think now is also Grossinger affiliated with them. The stores on Touhey, I know all the stores on Touhy between Crawford and East Prairie on both sides of the street. The Baskin Robbins ice cream store. There was Galens Pharmacy; there were a lot of gas stations. There was another deli; they're a different deli, Manny's, etc. The kids would get around on bicycles for the most part and go to all these places. I think there's still the Long John Silver's; [it] was there for a long time. It may be gone. There was a different place called [inaudible] before that. Kids have nothing to do; they just ride their bicycles around stopping at something. 

Lev Kalmens  26:33  
And that's what I've heard from talking to other people. Baseball was always a big thing. I don't know if you played baseball here in the summers.

Mark Zissman  27:01  
Yeah. I did Little League in the spring for a couple years, and then at Niles West I wrestled. What I remember doing more was on Saturday morning all the way through middle school, even in elementary school, the schools provided Saturday morning athletics for at least for the boys, maybe for the girls, too. It was football, flag football, in the fall, and then basketball in the winter, inside. I remember doing that every week for years. Some of the same teachers - Mr. Willison the gym teacher, Mr. [inaudible], Mr. Mauer, and others - that would coach that. It was very informal. You didn't really sign up for it; you just showed up, and there would be some amount of practicing. There would be pickup games that they would referee or whatever. It would be between nine and 12. We did that all the time, every every week. Not every week, but most weeks, for a lot of years. Mostly the boys that I remember in Lincolnwood, especially the ones in my neighborhood. There were a lot of boys my age, right there on Harding and East Prairie, and then out from there. There was always a lot of kids to play with. There were some famous people, of course. There's the current drummer for Styx. Todd Zuckerman who lived right behind us. You should try to get a history from Todd or from his brother; probably better from his older brother. He has two older brothers. His older brother, Paul, would be a good person for you to talk to. He's in Wisconsin now and, he could tell you about what it was like growing up. Very interesting. Great family, very musical family.

Lev Kalmens  28:43  
It sounds like the amount of smaller businesses as compared to now where you look at Lincoln Avenue and there's a lot of buildings that the tenants keep on rotating or places have been torn down. You paint a completely different picture of what Lincolnwood is now kind of full of.

Mark Zissman  29:05  
I guess that's right. It was always a mystery. I think it was a good thing because it kept taxes down. It was all what I call light industry. That was east of Hamlin, and then north of that, and south of Howard. This whole area and the existence of that and the tax base that that created was able to keep the taxes down on the residents who live there. But, for the kids, looking at all those buildings like Bell & Howell and Ditto and Accurate Fasteners - I don't remember all the names of them - Illinois Tool Works. When you interviewed Mrs. Smith, she talked about before all of that happened and what that was like. I didn't know that, but that was there. But to me, it was not interesting. It was confusing. What is all that stuff? What do they actually do at these places? Some of the buildings looked a little scary. It really wasn't useful. But, The Bunny Hutch and the novelty golf and the Dairy Queen, and all the other little places that there were. There was a pet store; there were lots of cool places. I guess I don't know how many of those are there at this point or not. But there was a lot to do. I'm [inaudble] a lot to do on Touhey from top to bottom. That was different because Pratt didn't have the bridge over the channel. Because of that - that was a whole big deal about why they didn't want the bridge - although it was a busy street, it wasn't as busy as those other ones and it was only really residential. I think the park in the summer, that Prosel Park, was really the core. That park, although I only went a couple times, it offered very inexpensive summer camp programs, free or a couple dollars for the whole summer. All the kids would ride their bikes there in the morning. Maybe they'd have to go home and go back. I don't remember now. They were in the pool. Once the pool was there, you could go in the morning and never leave. You could stay all afternoon at the pool, whether you were learning at the pool or whether you were just hanging out. That pool was a wonderful, wonderful thing. We actually don't have that where I live in. I live now in suburban Boston; although it's very similar to Lincolnwood a lot of ways, it's pool is not that nice. It has a pool; it's far away. My kids could never ride their bikes there. It's not centrally located and it wasn't nearly as nice. The pool and the centralized park that had a lot of tennis courts, also, is a cool thing. That's a really good thing to have. I remember on Halloween it would be chaotic at the park. I don't know why, but they would have all the kids come. There'd be hot dogs and hamburgers and a huge bonfire. Then the kids would get into trouble after that. How could you bring all the kids together on Halloween and then expect them to...not terrible trouble. But how could you ...whatever. That's what it was. It was a lot of fun.

Lev Kalmens  32:18  
It's interesting, you mention...well, now it's Dairy Star, which is a very popular ice cream place. Do you have memories of going to that Dairy Queen?

Mark Zissman  32:27  
Dairy Queen, I remember. I didn't go there as often as the Baskin Robbins, the 31 Flavors. We went there all the time; I almost worked there instead of Fanny's. I got a job; I got an offer. It was a little bit less money, probably like $2 instead of $2.50; I don't remember exactly. You could tell, even at the time, that my opportunities at Baskin Robbins were going to be limited. The opportunities at the deli were unlimited. It was a good choice to go with the deli. We went there more. There was a Rubens deli that was right down from the Baskin Robbins, which we would go to occasionally. But I think that the where my mom would always buy our milk with a milk pail. My parents would send me in there. I was pretty little, and my dad would say milk was $1.30. Because it's a loss leader; because it was the only thing that we bought. I had to go in there...my mom would tell me get 1% or get 2%, one 2% milk. We wanted in the plastic or whatever it was, and we want to change from the $2. It needed to be right. That's a lot to remember when you're little; it's heavy. I'd have to try to remember what kind of which milk it was; I have to try to make sure that change was right and then bring it back out. We would do that every week. We went there a lot; we didn't find much else there. But the post office...one thing that's exactly the same. The post office. Although the zip code changed, the post office is still where it was. I remember when there used to be there was this really big Kmart-like store called Community. That was across from Kiddieland, which everybody also remembers if they grew up around that time. Kiddieland and Community were there. Kiddieland closed at some point. The Community, I don't know if it's a Home Depot or whatever it is.

Lev Kalmens  33:32  
It is.

Mark Zissman  34:16  
And, of course, Lincoln Village. All the kids would go to Lincoln Village; it was wonderful. I remember when they built the theater. I remember sneaking with my friends to see the R rated movies; Saturday Night Fever is an example there. It was really nice. It was this big white three story-ish big thing. I think at first it was all just one theater in there, and then eventually they split it up into the multiples. Lincoln Village was great. I bought my first stereo at the audio store. We got all the clothes that we bought. We got a lot of stuff.

Lev Kalmens  34:57  
What is something that you're most proud of?

Mark Zissman  34:59  
I'm proud of my wife and what my children, they're 30 years old now, have accomplished. I've accomplished some, but like I said, it was pretty easy. It was pretty easy for me. My accomplishments are not significant, really, compared to my parents and my grandparents. [Inaudible] I'm proud to have children that are contributing members of society, that I'm a contributing member of society at some level. It's all good. It's been a good life so far. I enjoyed my time in Lincolnwood. That said, everything wasn't perfect in Lincolnwood, either. I'm sure others have talked about this, but the level of diversity was very limited. Diversity in Lincolnwood at that time, was if there were Jewish people as well as Christian people. That was diversity. There were very few Asian people. I don't remember any African Americans. Maybe there were a couple. I think that has changed. When I visited the schools...the schools did an open house about 10 years ago. You could go around and get get into Todd Hall, Rutledge Hall and Lincoln Hall if you were an alumnus or anybody could. That was very interesting, talking to the administrators and the teachers who were there about how things had changed, I think was pretty interesting. That is likely a change for the best. It was actually a little bit more diverse at Niles West, a little bit more than Lincolnwood. Even socio-economically it was more diverse there. So that was probably better. I don't think a lot about what I'm most proud of, but I am happy. I do think very fondly about my childhood, as Mrs. Smith said, although she grew up 30 years earlier. I knew her son Ron. Lincolnwood was a great place to grow up, and for her great place to live as an adult. For me, a great place to visit, to come back to occasionally.

Lev Kalmens  37:11  
I want to thank you for taking the time to speak with me, and share your Lincolnwood Story with us.

Mark Zissman  37:16  
Thank you very much.