I want to thank Ross Werland for highlighting the need for premarital education and for his effective column developing the idea of court visits as part of any required curriculum (“A detour before walking down the aisle,” May 21). The response I have received in terms of calls and interest was overwhelming and overwhelmingly positive.
The need and audience for family news related to the potential or actual endings of marriages is an enormous one. Every year the divorce rate lingers at over 45 percent in Illinois and throughout the country, impacting a million children annually. So far, the only solution young couples have found is to avoid marriage in record numbers, which, of course, creates problems of its own.
Thank you for recognizing and writing so artfully about society’s need to grapple with our relationships and the consequences of them coming apart.
— Gemma B. Allen, attorney, Chicago
ON-THE-JOB MEMORIES
Since all things are relative, I have to say that my favorite job as a teenager (Readers Forum, May 28) was working, at 14, in a store in Maine called The Kandy Kitchen. I’d gone there for my summer vacation but then decided that I needed to earn some money to bring home souvenirs.
My job was threefold: candy seller, kitchen helper and candy maker. I rolled coconut into balls for bonbons. The pay was $2 a day for a seven-day week, eight hours a day. That was in 1944.
I soon developed a crush on the boss’ 18-year-old son. Due to my slim hope of ever landing him, plus the relentless hours, I quit after only one week.
It was a valuable experience: Don’t pursue impossible dreams and never work more than five days a week at a job you don’t love.
— Gloria Kaplan Sulkin, Chicago
My first job at age 13 was at a tobacco factory. I would push a cart of tobacco to workers at their tables. I always had to run to the door — I felt so sick to my stomach — but I did not give up. All of the workers knew I was trying and tried to help me.
I was moved (to a new job) and now I was putting stamps on packages of Liggett & Myers cigarettes. I did finish the summer out, went back to school, took shorthand and typing. I had a nice job at Western Electric until I left there to be married very happily in 1931.
I have been living in a retirement center for the last 21 years. I like to refer to the old days but not many listen anymore.
— Katherine Schramm, age 92, Chicago
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UP NEXT
What is the best way to combat “summer slide,” when students lose a substantial chunk of what they learned the previous school year?
BACKGROUND: The June/July issue of Offspring magazine reports on a 1996 study at the University of Missouri that found that students in all grade levels lost, on average, a month’s worth of skills between school years.
