Myles died in the early 60's in Chicago. He was a terrific guy and his death was a reality check for those many of us who knew and cared about him He served in the military after high school and suffered from mental illness. He took his life. (submitted by Sheryn Goldenhersh, Roberta Teper, and Barbara Bisno)

I am so glad that Sheryn remembered Myles, as I often do, not only because his suicide was in itself so sad, but also because it represented a kind of 'coming of age ' moment for me....it represented my first confrontation with death in a peer group member, and a number of perhaps only geographic coincidences which I will describe briefly below.

Myles and his sister, Pam, moved to U City in part because our parents were friends, they liked the area, and they were not happy in the inner city. My mother encouraged our friendship, and we were also cabin mates at Camp Hawthorn, the YMHA sponsored camp, where my mother was also employed. When we organized our YMHA club, Myles was invited and joined. In my junior year my father took a job in Chicago, and the Wortys visited us on at least one occasion; we did the usual round of site seeing and dinners together, including the Museum of Science and Industry, which was near our house in the Hyde Park neighborhood on the south side.

I don't know exactly when it occurred in relationship to graduation, but my mother awakened me one morning to tell me the sad news....that they had found Myles in a hotel room one block from the Museum where we had only several months before visited together. An impressionable adolescent like myself couldn't help but wonder whether he had thought about some kind of communication before he changed his mind.

Now that I have returned to live in Chicago after a 35 year absence, and now take my grandchildren to the same Museum or visit the nearby University of Chicago and pass by the Hotel where he died, I think about Myles quite often and wonder.... (Submitted by Art Simon)

Myles Wartey

Home