Milton A. Dushkin was born in Chicago on Wednesday, January 4, 1911. His father, Sam (Shmuel), was a talented painter from Kovno (now Kaunas, Lithuania). In fact, we still have several of Sam's works hanging in my parents' house. He came to Chicago from Kovno in 1903, some 39 years before it was turned into the ghetto shtetl that saw over 80,000 die in the Holocaust there.
Young Milton was a prodigy. He got through grade school, high school, and college in 13 years (7, 3, and 3 respectively), and medical school a semester early. He finished his residency and had his own medical practice before he turned 24. His younger sister Leah also did well in school, in a time and place where not many young Jewish women in Chicago did.
The newly-degreed Dr. Dushkin hung out his shingle in Des Moines, IA as a General Practitioner. In the '30s this meant he was a pediatrician, obstetrician, family doctor, and even surgeon. Before the outbreak of World War II, Milton enlisted in the army with his brother-in-law and best friend (also a doctor), Werner Eisenstadt. They were both commissioned officers, and when war broke out, Milton was assigned to the China/Burma/Indian Theatre of operations (CBI), and Werner to the European War. Funny thing about that was that Werner, to his dying day in his 90s, spoke with the heaviest German accent I've ever heard.
But back to our Dr. Dushkin. He plunged into the war with both feet. He was a Major when he was assigned to Dr. Gordon Seagrave, a.k.a. "The Burma Surgeon", who headed up what would eventually become the first M.A.S.H. units, mobile surgical units that went with General Stillwell and Merrill's Marauders, to carve and keep open a path from India through Burma to send relief to China, with the bulk of the Japanese army determined to stop them.
In his book "Burma Surgeon Returns", Dr. Seagrave writes about my grandfather: "I selected my executive officer, Major Dushkin, a fire-eater who seemed determined to take vengeance on the Japanese for all the sins of the Axis against the Hebrew race." And..."It became immediately apparent to Dushkin that the captain in charge was determined to have nothing to do with him. But you couldn't do such things to Dushkin. You couldn't keep him quiet if you put him in a padded cell. At Ningham, in order to keep everyone from going mad, we had to issue an order forbidding him to pull any wisecracks before 3 P.M. Dushkin blithely changed P.M. to A.M. and kept on going."
And finally, also from "Burma Surgeon Returns", this snippet sums up the man (seated in the picture left) as an officer: "Major Dushkin was a wonderful letter writer - to his wife. He used to write her such wonderful letters that he lost his censorship privileges for three months! He wrote to no one else, not even reports to his C.O. I soon learned that once Dushkin got away from me on a flank move, he and his detachment would be completely lost, then suddenly reappear again half a hundred miles away. It was no use worrying about him. He would undoubtedly take good care of himself, or his boys would see to it that he didn't get hurt." Although I wouldn't come into the good Doctor's world for another 15 years, that was exactly the same man I knew and loved. Oh, by the way, I have a box full of those letters he wrote to my grandmother and mother. I doubt it was all of them, but there ARE a bunch... And sure enough, parts of them are blacked out, or even cut out. Gotta love the Army.Moving on a few years, Dr. Dushkin moved up from Major Dushkin, to Lt. Colonel Dushkin, to bird-Colonel Dushkin, staying active duty and, because he apparently didn't think being the father of two, a Colonel in the U.S. Army, and a successful doctor was quite enough on his plate, he decided to go back to medical school and become a Psychiatrist. And he finished this degree a year early too.
By this time, my father had just completed his tour in Korea and had married my mother (the former Tanya Dushkin). My father, unlike his new father-in-law, had no intention of making the Army his vocation. He was a corporal who had seen quite enough of the 38th parallel, the DMZ, and even kimchee. As part of his enlistment deal, he had to serve 3 years active, then either 6 years reserve, or 3 years "active reserve". He chose the latter. As part of that he had weekly meetings with his reserve outfit, where they trained in case they were ever to be called up.
During one of these training weekends, my grandfather, who by now was the Chief Medical Officer for my father's division, decided he'd like to have a bit of fun. As part of the readiness training, all active reservists had to be kept up on all inoculations, in case they were needed to go overseas. They all had shot records with them, and all shots had to be updated on a yearly basis. There were something like 9 shots, all with large-gauge and painful needles, to be given. But you spread them out over a year and it wasn't so bad. My father had just gotten the last of his shots for the year when he was stopped in the hall by Colonel Dushkin (who made him salute at full attention, just because it amused him). After the salute, the Colonel asked Corporal Paullin for his shot record. My father grinned, knowing it was full and correct, and handed it to the Colonel, who promptly tore it into little pieces. The grin turned into a near sob... Colonel Dushkin then handed a blank shot record to Corporal Paullin and told him he had til the end of the day (their last day on this training weekend) to get it filled.
My parents lived right next door to my grandparents, with both houses connected by an intercom. That night my father answered the intercom with difficulty, because both of his arms were almost useless. My grandmother asked him what was wrong. He proceeded to call her husband all sorts of names. My poor, perplexed grandmother only replied that must be why her husband was laughing so hard he was almost crying. Later, he claimed that "If the Army offers you something for nothing, you take it." But I think it was for marrying his only daughter.
After he retired from the Army, his flourishing Psychiatric practice really took off. At various points in time he headed up the Psychiatry Departments at Cook County Hospital, Thorek Hospital in Chicago, and the Elgin Mental Health Center in Elgin, IL among others, all while handling a large private practice. He is credited (at least by Time Magazine) with naming the ailment many had in 1961 "nucleomitophobia" - fear of the atom. He even had the distinction of being one of convicted serial killer Richard Speck's Psychiatrists.
I was the first (of his eventual 4) grandchild. And personally, I like to believe I was his favorite. While my brother inherited my father's work ethic and people skills, I was the intellectual clone of my mother, who in turn had her father's proclivities for reading and intellectual pursuits. Even as an adolescent and teenager, my grandfather and I had discussions, debates, and even arguments. Although those were few and far between, because we also shared most of our liberal views.
My grandfather's father died when he (Sam) was 56. So in fact had several other males in his family. And given that by the time my grandfather was approaching 56, he was about 80 lbs overweight, a pipe and cigar smoker, and had had several previous heart attacks, he was pretty excited when he passed his 56th birthday without incident. But he knew, even then, that he was on borrowed time, and he decided that he had lived his life on his terms for a lot of years, and wasn't about to diet, or give up anything that contributed to his love of life.
One of those loves was the Cubs. He took my brother and me to probably 10 or 15 games a year at Wrigley, and we'd never miss a home opener. He would good-naturedly complain every year about the prices, and loudly looked forward to the day he'd qualify for senior citizen rates. When he had his last heart attack, in May of 1975, he was 64 years old. He had missed it by 11 months. Months after the funeral, my mother and I were the only ones in the family (including extended family) that really hadn't cried. This perplexed most of the family, considering we were probably the two closest people to him in his life, besides his wife. But mom and I both knew that he had lived exactly the life he would have chosen, almost without exception. In fact, to this day, I believe his only real regret would be missing out on the damned senior rates at Wrigley Field.
