Still, he could be very convincing. Not long after I went on assignment with him, one of the Gardner relatives received a call from the Palmer House Hotel—one of Chicago’s most luxurious, illustrious hotels, along the lines of the Waldorf Astoria in New York. It seemed that Uncle Willie—who frequented the racetrack—had checked in at the front desk by showing them his winning stubs from the track. With the explanation that he’d pay them the next day once he had time to cash them in, he charmed himself right into the presidential penthouse suite. Once the hotel management figured out that the stubs were worthless—just discarded stubs, not even somebody else’s winning tickets—they called the family to come get Uncle Willie rather than have the negative publicity from police involvement.
As one of the family members along for the ride to coax Uncle Willie out of the penthouse, I had the fortune to catch a glimpse of the stuff of which dreams were made. The luxurious lobby of the Palmer House made the pages of the Spiegel catalog seem almost ordinary. And that penthouse suite—with multiple bedrooms, a bathroom that could house two families, a sitting room here, a living room there, and furnishings made of gold, silk, satin, velvet—was like nothing I’d ever dreamt of, let alone seen. To think that I’d ever stay in such a place was too much to dream, too crazy to want. But as I cajoled Uncle Willie into going home with us, I planted that fantasy inside myself just the same.
Many lifetimes later, after I’d found myself staying in the suites of a few extraordinary hotels, I was invited to the Palmer House Hotel to attend a reception hosted by the president of the National Education Association, one of my largest institutional investment clients. It didn’t occur to me until I arrived at the reception, which happened to be in that very same presidential penthouse suite, why it was that I began to have such a powerful déjà vu. At first, I thought better than to confess the reason I was able to direct anyone who asked to the bathroom, the wet bar, or the exit to the patio, but then I did mention it to a couple of older women, who laughed right along with me.
One of them said, “We all have an Uncle Willie in our family.” The other woman added, “And some of us have an Aunt Willamena too.”
At the age of eight I obviously had few insights into the causes of mental illness. So when I started picking up on my family members not being quite right, it gave me something new to fear. If this crazy thing ran in the family, what did that say about me? What if I had it or was going to get it? The fear may have also been why I stayed away from becoming much of a drinker. I didn’t want to lose the little control of my world I had, that modest feeling of being able to respond to rapidly changing surroundings, situations, and circumstances over which I otherwise had no control.
