One day in the summer of 2015, a young man named Albin Sikora noticed a not-so-young man sitting in the Oyster Bar inside New York City’s Grand Central Station.
“He was having soup and he was wearing a really nice sport coat,” said Sikora. “So I decided to walk up to him and ask him questions and as I got closer I realized it was David Letterman.”
Sikora, who was born and raised on the Northwest Side of Chicago, was on a mission: the creation of an oral history comprised of interviewing one person a day for 100 consecutive days — May 14 to Aug. 20, 2015 — on the matter of care and community.
This was born out of his then-professional chores researching aspects of the Affordable Care Act and a life spent, as he puts it, “talking to all sorts of people about all sorts of things and in doing so learning that there is no monopoly on knowledge.”
Initially there were the same five questions he asked: “What is care?” “What do people care about?” “How do you take care of yourself?” “How do you take care of others?” and “How do you allow others to care for you?” But eventually the answers all boiled down to the specific responses to that final question.
Sikora is quite personable, so it is not surprising to hear him say, “It was up to me to engage these people and though not every one of them was forthcoming, it makes me happy to say that not one of them walked away in a huff.”
Though he did ask a few friends, more than 80 of the respondents were strangers. Some of their answers were lengthy and some of them terse, such as Korina (“Buy me a drink”), Merry (“I let my husband take the kids”) or Joe (“Usually, I sit on my ass and just make it happen.”).
And so he walked up to Letterman — who had ended his long TV career May 20, 2015, and was sitting with his attorney — and introduced himself and told him what he wanted.
He was a bit reluctant at first, but Letterman eventually answered: “That’s difficult because of my ego. I feel I can do a better job caring for others than others can do caring for me but in small ways, somebody recently, entirely unexpectedly, in an entirely unexpected circumstance said something to me, three words, that made me feel that I was truly cared for. And, I can’t tell you the specifics.”
The 36-year-old Sikora earned a degree in philosophy from the University of San Francisco in 2002, which included a year studying at Oxford in England. He then spent some years in Richmond (Virginia) with the Legal Aid Justice Center, working with homeless clients, people who lived in public housing, illegal immigrants who lived in abysmal housing. It was, Sikora says, “a cast of characters that helped inform my passions.”
It was there he started a zine called Young Philosopher, which he filled with stories told to him by “friends, strangers, celebrities and unknowns of all kinds.” He spent a year in Los Angeles and five in New York City. He made a documentary about Takahiro Ueno, the first Japanese person to win the “Showtime at the Apollo” amateur talent contest, and then he went to work for the Peace Corps in Bulgaria, teaching English to grammar school children and job training sessions for adults.
Back in the U.S. he studied international policy and diplomacy at the Josef Korbel School for International Studies at the University of Denver and since 2014 he’s been living and working in Washington, D.C., where he works in public affairs at Weber Shandwick, a global communications company. (Since September 2015 he has contributed to the Tribune’s chicagonow.com with a blog called “Out of the Loop”).
He returns to Chicago often to visit his folks and when asked about any changes he has sensed in the mood of Washington since the new president has moved in, Sikora says, “It’s good not to get bogged down by the sensationalism of it all. The best way I think to maneuver in this new landscape is to keep my nose to the grindstone.”
His parents, Barbara and Albin, are now retired and split their time between an apartment in Chicago and a home in southwest Michigan. They are understandably proud of all their kids. Eldest son Chris is a hospice chaplain in San Diego and middle son Joseph is a successful actor — currently starring in the Starz network series “Power” — who lives in New York.
Only one of his family members is included in the “care” interviews.
“I just decided to make Joe the 100th interview,” says Albin. And Joe is, typically, very thoughtful, saying in part, “I like it when people reach out. I like when they come through, when they’re honest and understanding.”
The 100 — a vast array of ages, colors and opinions — are contained on a poster that is part of Albin’s ongoing project. “The other is a website (www.albinsikora.com) that I hope will continue the dialogue,” he says.
On some nights, Sikora will take off alone on the streets and sidewalks of D.C. on his skateboard. As a teenager, he was something of a hotshot member of the local skateboarding subculture.
“Boarding is still kind of my safety blanket,” he says.
But asking questions and listening to answers also brings him a certain kind of serenity.
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“In this day and age I really think the word ‘love’ has become almost meaningless, we use it so off-handedly,” he says. “But there is still meaning to the word ‘care’ and I am going to keep asking people what that means to them. In doing this I feel more a part of a community and sense that, in so many important ways, we are all connected.”
Twitter @rickkogan
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