Latest / The Art of Aging / Episode 8 - Labor & The Mob

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Episode 8 - Labor & The Mob · The Art of Aging

• 0:07
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome back to the Art of Aging Podcast, produced right here at Montgomery Place, where we celebrate life, honor legacy, and build a community where residents thrive at every stage of life.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_01: Today's episode is entitled Labor and the Mob.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_01: We are joined by attorney Peter Dowd.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_01: Like so many residents here at Montgomery Place, Peter has lived a fascinating and accomplished life.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_01: Over the course of his career as a labor attorney in Chicago, he has seen history unfold firsthand.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_01: He has worked on complex and important cases and met some truly unforgettable people along the way.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_01: But before the courtroom, before Chicago, and before the career, there was a beginning.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: The Art of Aging is hosted by Mark Millet, President and CEO Montgomery Place, and sponsored by Trinity Rehab, Unidime, Life Care at Home, and Plant Moran.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_01: Well, welcome to our beautiful set here at Montgomery Place with a beautiful look at the lake out of the 10th floor here.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_01: So got a lovely day to sit and have a conversation about labor and the mob.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_01: So let's start at the beginning.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_01: If you could just share with me what is your earliest childhood memory?
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_02: Um my earliest childhood memory is uh navigating sand in Texas.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_02: Tell me more.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_02: My parents told me that probably that recollection was when my father was in the army.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_02: They were assigned in Texas, and my sister was born down in San Antonio.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_02: And their earliest recollection was that I came back from the neighbors drunk, that apparently the neighbors had given me drinks to cool me off.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_02: They could pretty well tell that I was under the influence.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_02: My goodness.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_02: Mine was a little more sober.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_01: I was just trying to get someplace.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_01: Gotcha.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_01: So what were those early experiences or people in your life that really shaped the person that you became today?
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_02: Aaron Powell Well, I think uh in high school, I went to a Catholic high school, and there were several uh the teaching brothers there uh who really were focused on uh justice and what was going on in the country.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_02: At that point, civil rights uh was an issue, uh the Vietnam War uh was going to be uh dominating, but at that time that was going on with other countries.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_02: And um they were very uh determined to show that the Catholic Church was not so conservative, uh, that if you believed in uh what Jesus said that you should be doing something about uh helping other people.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_02: I ended up joining the order uh after high school, and that continued.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_02: There were uh some really good teachers that I had.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_02: I f I spent a year in what was sort of like a um uh living in an abbey.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_02: A year with no parents, no TV.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, I take that back.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_02: They did show that John Kennedy was elected.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_02: That was the only TV that I saw for that year that I spent there.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_02: Uh but along with all the prayer and uh and the hard work, uh there was also the orientation towards social justice.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_02: And when I was in um the University of Dayton, which was run by the Marionists, which is the order that I joined, um I was allowed uh in my sophomore year there uh to put together a program about life in the city, what's going on in the city, what's going on in the civil rights movement.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_02: Some of us joined protests uh over housing issues in Dayton.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_02: We brought in people, um, there was a guy who was head of the YMCA who did uh group dynamic training with uh people.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_02: There were probably about 40 of us uh who were in this program.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_02: And the idea was to uh figure out when you got out of college what you could do to uh, you know, work on uh social justice issues.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_02: So that was um very much an influence on me.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_02: And then by the time I graduated, uh the um religious order was shifting back to being more conservative.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_02: They're pretty clear now that they wanted people to be teaching in a high school or teaching in a uh, you know, a college.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_02: They had a cup several colleges that they ran, and my first assignment in Chester, Pennsylvania was uh five uh class preparations in the school yearbook, which I interpreted to mean to keep Pete Doubt off the streets.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_02: And uh so eventually I decided it wasn't for me.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_02: And I left the order.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_02: Uh I got a job uh teaching in a junior high school on Long Island, not far from uh where I grew up and across the street from the Catholic high school that I went to for four years.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_02: Um I used to have to be careful wearing my shamanade jacket because we rode in the public school buses, so I'd get hassled every once in a while.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_02: Sure.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_02: Especially if I had a girlfriend from from the high school.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_02: Sure.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_02: So it was now a junior high school, and teaching social studies, I realized that many of the teachers never got to the labor movement, they never got to civil rights, uh, they taught in a in a textbook.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_02: And um, the principal hired me for a summer to work on curriculum, and I tried to put together material so that you could teach backwards.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_02: You could talk about what was going on now, and then you could look back and see how you got there and how history affected that.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_02: And uh foolishly, because I was a probationary teacher, I got involved in organizing a union uh among the teachers.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_02: Uh in New York, the Taylor law made it illegal to strike, uh, plus you'd lose a day's pay for every day that you're out, or something like that.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_02: So that we were doing informational picketing.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_02: Uh I remember carrying my uh young daughter on a backpack, uh, which ended up getting us some TV news.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_02: There's a little girl out there, you know, picketing the Miniola Public Schools.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_02: Surprisingly, uh, we won.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_02: Uh the Board of Ed agreed to recognize the union.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_02: The superintendent quit.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_02: And uh then we had to negotiate a contract.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_02: And I was on the negotiating team.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_02: Part of my job was to find a lawyer who could uh represent us, and we went found somebody and went through the process.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_02: And at the end of it, I decided I could do that, and I'd rather do that than be like a vice principal or principal or something.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_02: So I started looking at law schools to see what might be available, and that kind of set me along along the way.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_02: Eventually, um I got into the uh University of Chicago.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_02: Uh my wife Marsha had been involved in the uh civil rights movement here.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_02: Uh she met a lot of people that she really liked, despite the fact that uh when walking through um the uh Marquette Park, she'd been cherry-bombed and uh ended up in the hospital getting pieces of glass out of her leg.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_02: Oh my goodness.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_02: But she liked the people who were involved in you know the civil rights movement.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_02: She was on the march with Martin Luther King.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_02: And uh so she convinced me we we should consider Chicago that she thought it was a really a great place to live.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and obviously it was a a good union town.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I was looking at New York or Boston or San Francisco or Chicago, the place where you know there were enough unions that some young guy could get a job and do what they wanted to do and represent the clients that they wanted.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_01: So your career path was a little a little different then.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_01: So it wasn't initially growing up you wanted to be an attorney, you wanted to get into education, and that led you to your continuing education and the and the next journey.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, the the thought of being on a debate team was yeah, who would ever want to do that?
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_02: You know, that was kind of the way I felt.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_02: But once you, you know, become a lawyer and you're arguing cases and you get used to standing up and arguing.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_01: Very good, very good.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_01: So having a having a career, being a teacher, um, sounds like you started a a family and then go back to school to become a lawyer.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_01: How did you juggle and balance just having time to study?
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_01: I I I can't imagine, you know, the work that you had to put into, you know, for for both of those degrees.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_01: But how did you balance being a father and a husband and going to school and and and getting your your law degree?
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_02: So it helped going back to the law school to have taught, you know, for a number of years, and I was 29.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_02: And uh so I w wasn't as pressured as most of the kids who had just gone straight through uh, you know, high school, never gotten less than an A.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I was uh I I graduated cum laude, but I got the lowest cum laude possible, 3.000 from the University of Dayton.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_02: And I think they let me in because uh of a certain amount of diversity.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_02: There were usually a dozen people in a law school class at the University of Chicago who just had different backgrounds, and I was one of those people.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_02: Um so I knew that I had to uh spend a lot of time reading.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and midway through law school I had to get glasses.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_02: But I got through because my wife uh, you know, she took care of our child.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_02: She got a job with the Barr Foundation.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_02: Uh eventually uh the law review hired her to read lawyers' uh submissions and make sense of them and suggest audits that might actually make them intelligible.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_02: That happened because our next door neighbor became the editor-in-chief of the law review.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_02: But she uh she did a consumer fraud study for the uh Barr Foundation, and uh so she earned money.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_02: Uh we had um a uh co-op that our uh daughter could be in, uh Hyde Park Unitarian co-op.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_02: Uh so uh she was old enough to participate in that.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_02: I know that uh she attended a session with one of the uh the only female lawyer on the faculty who told all these spouses that uh you should just figure you're not gonna have a husband for the next three years.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_02: They're gonna be really busy, don't expect them to be able to help out.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_02: It's your job just to take care of them.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_02: She was so pissed.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_02: She thought that was really bad.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_02: And uh she um made sure that I understood that that was not her perspective, that I was expected to help with the uh with the kids of the house and participate.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_02: And in fact, I in order to relax, I spent at least an hour every night reading a novel of some kind, which the law school professor Soya Menchikov said he's not gonna have time to read anything.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_02: You know, other than law books.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_02: But l you you were reading hundreds of pages every day, and then you're in class and you know, having to uh answer questions, figure out what was going on in the class.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_01: So as you mentioned earlier, Chicago is rich in labor and unions and certainly some colorful politics and other maybe shady characters.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_01: It sounds like in your career you've had an opportunity to maybe run into all those types of people.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_01: So could you just share with us maybe some of your stories and experiences of, you know, in the courtroom and some of those folks that you had to uh to go up against?
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_01: Aaron Powell Yeah.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_02: So I knew that the labor movement uh was plagued with uh some really difficult uh circumstances.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_02: I I know that some of the uh labor unions turned to the mob because companies were violating the law.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, they would hire uh police, sometimes the Chicago police, to break up uh strikes.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and um in order to deal with the illegality of a lot of uh employers, some of the unions became uh very much controlled by the mob.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_02: The laborers union and the Teamsters had uh known mobsters at all levels of uh the uh leadership of the organization.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_02: And year after year the federal government would, you know, announce that they were investigating the mob in Chicago and they were gonna root out the mob, and that would be the only thing that would happen if they did an investigation.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_02: It we never heard anything about it.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_02: Uh we had one client uh at the law firm that I first uh belonged to uh who was known to be a mob guy.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_02: And uh I asked my partner, why the hell are we, you know, representing this union?
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_02: And he said the guy came to him and he said, I'm the head of this union, I want everything about this union to be legal.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_02: I want to do it right, I want to represent the members properly, and there are going to be other things that are gonna be investigated, but I promise you there'll be nothing illegal about anything in the union.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_02: I would not have done that, but he did.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_02: And so we represented this one union, and uh I did handle some of the stuff for uh their pension fund and their health fund.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_02: Uh but I left there, and uh in 1985 I didn't have any clients who had any uh ties with the union, and the Teamsters Union was the subject of a lawsuit filed by the federal government, and they sued the international union uh and they sued uh local union and they entered into a consent decree approved by the court, which enabled the Teamsters Union to set up a um system for rooting out the mob.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_02: So they had investigators, and this is all paid for by the international under court order, and they had a panel of three judges.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_02: So if they were investigating somebody in a Teamster local in Chicago, they would bring the evidence to this panel.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_02: I don't remember the details of it, but I remember there was a retired FBI officer, there was a retired judge and and somebody else.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_02: Those were the three people, all with spotless, you know, rep reputations.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_02: So if they found that somebody was tied in with the mob in any way they could expel them from the union.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_02: And often they you know tried to challenge those and sued, and but they all lost when they when they challenged the system.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_02: So the consent decree worked.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_02: And there was one Teamster local uh that handled Southwater Market produce and uh a lot of the grocery stores, the warehouses, and that type of thing.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_02: And uh it was local 703, and they were put in trusteeship, I think, in uh 1990.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_02: And uh the mob had uh tried to pull off a trick to prevent the consent decree from working, and what they did was they they convinced the members, especially the union stewards, that this whole reform thing was bad, and you and we we need to be we need to have two unions representing us.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_02: And so they got the members to agree to be represented by this other union, the National Production Workers Union, which was in fact being run by the son of one of the mobsters who ran 703.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_02: So they now had two unions, and then they got together in an executive board meeting and decided they no longer wanted to represent the members.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_02: So now they're all members of the production workers union.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_02: They're no longer Teamsters.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_02: And they also tried to transfer the money from the pension and the health and welfare fund over to the control of people appointed by the production workers union.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_02: So the International came in, sued them, filed labor board charges, um, and it took three years uh for that case to go forward, and the labor board ruled in favor of the Teamsters that this was illegal, they couldn't do that, and uh they, you know, forced the employers to recognize the Teamsters again, and they held an election, and so they elected uh, you know, a group of people that were no were not on the mob, and they were given a a list of labor firms that had no mob clients.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_02: That that's what I was told.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_02: Apparently we were on the list, got interviewed, and we got hired.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_02: And over the next uh couple of years there was a uh tug of war between people who were tied in with the mob and and the new people who came in.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_01: Was there ever a time or a case that you felt threatened or nervous about who was in the courtroom with you?
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_02: Uh well the next thing we got involved in was the labor's union.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_02: And um, when this Teamsters local 703 was in trustee trusteeship, they appointed another union person to be the trustee.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_02: So he was the sole officer.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_02: He ran the union.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_02: He put his own people on the payroll, and they didn't do anything for 703.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_02: They were handling stuff for his local.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_02: So he basically built that local union while they were in trusteeship.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_02: And when they came out of trusteeship, they had hardly any money because this guy, who was a union officer who should have been acting as a trustee, you know, had taken all their money.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_02: He was a powerful uh union leader, so there was nothing they could do about it at that point.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_02: My partner happened to be on an airplane with somebody from the Attorney General's office, and they were talking about labor and the efforts of the U.S.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_02: uh uh you know to get rid of the mob, and he told the attorney that you guys are giving reform a bad name.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_02: You know, you appointed a trustee of a Teamster local, and you know, he bribed the local and he didn't negotiate contracts, he didn't represent anybody.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_02: And you're doing a bad job.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_02: You if you're gonna put it local in trusteeship, you need to find somebody who can run that union and do it for the benefit of the members.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_02: Otherwise, no one's gonna be supporting what you're doing.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_02: They're gonna feel like the mob did better for us than than you're doing.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_02: So we got a call and they said uh they were putting the uh labor's district council, which is the umbrella organization over like 20 local unions in the Chicago area, uh, and they wanted to name us somebody who could run the local.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_02: And we talked about it.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_02: We gave them some names, and they came back a few weeks later and they said they wanted my partner, Robert Block, to be the trustee.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_02: So we talked about it, and and Robert negotiated a deal that I'll run the union, that's all I need to do.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_02: I don't need to investigate mob figures.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_02: That's your job.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_02: I can't be fired because somebody didn't like what I'm doing for the union unless the international and the judge agrees that I I should be replaced.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_02: And they agreed to it.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_02: And uh so he took the job and uh they appointed U.S.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_02: marshals uh to be uh uh in the lobby of our law firm on Michigan Avenue and one by his house for a period of time.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_02: I think the the thought was that, you know, if they if they did anything to Robert, there's just going to be somebody else, and there'd be a huge invest investigation, you know, to find out, you know, who assassinated a trustee.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_02: So nothing like that ever really happened.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_02: Uh there was something that happened to Tom Steady uh a couple of years after uh he was in office.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_02: Two guys got in the back of his car when he came out of uh the union, um, and they were people that he knew, but they weren't friends.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_02: They told him he was resigning uh, you know, as the Secretary Treasurer of the Union.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_02: They showed him a picture of his daughter going to school, picture of his house.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and he called me up, and you know, he was in a panic because they were threatening his family.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_02: And I called the U.S.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_02: Attorney's Office, and uh it was either I think it was maybe even the next day, a guy from the FBI and the U.S.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_02: Attorney's Office hauled these guys out of their job, sat them down, told them the whole thing had been recorded, and they better hope Tom didn't trip and fall.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_02: Because they were going to be on the hook.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_02: And so, you know, there was that kind of back.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_02: Of course, Tom was very happy.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_02: He thought I was a hero.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, but it was, you know, it was the government uh backing up what they were doing, you know, with that local union.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_01: So what lessons did your legal career teach you about people, resilience, and leadership?
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I think that what I liked about the labor movement was that there were so many people uh, you know, that stepped up, uh, wanted to represent the members, were willing to deal with conflict, sometimes at uh in jeopardy of being uh you know, fired as a result of it.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_02: There were just a lot of people uh that cared about other people and you know would join together and work with them.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_01: So from that intoxicated little boy to a teacher, an educator to an attorney, what does the next chapter look like for you?
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I'm still working a little bit.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_02: I've got a couple of cases uh that I wanted to uh see you know to the conclusion.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_02: So I'm technically still the managing partner of the firm.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, but um I didn't think I don't think I did anything the last two months.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_02: And last year I probably averaged six hours.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_02: Uh so I feel like I have a certain degree of influence over keeping the law firm you know headed in the right direction.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_02: I'm also uh free to do a lot of other things, and I was living in a really nice community, Riverside, uh bored to tears.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_02: And I started looking at uh re you know, retirement communities to see w, you know, where there would be an interesting place to live.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_02: Sure.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_02: And I looked at a lot of 'em and uh I read an article in US News and World Report about the two two uh places in Illinois that were among the hundred best in the country and Montgomery Place was listed.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_02: And then they were Montgomery Place and another place were the two best in Chicago.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_02: And the other one was actually in a in a suburb.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_02: So and I had loved Hyde Park when we were here.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_02: So I came down and took a look at it and was uh I was actually blown away by the messenger.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_02: Montgomery Messenger.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_02: It's like twenty-six pages with stories, poetry, uh opinion pieces, film committee, Friday night speakers, uh just a wealth of interesting activities which meant all written by the residents who live here.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_01: If I they produce it, they they write it, it's a it's it is amazing.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, I realized that this wasn't something that, you know, some CEO, you know, secretary was writing or anything like that.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_02: These were all people that, you know, had an interesting background.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_02: So uh I talked to Marsha about it, and uh, you know, we came down and looked, and uh it looked like the ideal place for us.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_02: My my thought at one point was, you know, it'd be great if I was going to retire to find a college town, you know, where there'd be things I could go to.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_02: And I got the University of Chicago.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and you know, it's been it's been really great.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_02: You know, and so much so that uh you know, I started going to the Speakers Committee meetings and getting involved in contacting people and bringing them in to uh, you know, speak on Friday nights.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_02: And that's been, you know, very interesting.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_02: Aaron Powell And you dabbled a little bit in the arts.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_02: So I uh I went to a Catholic uh grade school.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_02: We were 60 kids in a classroom, and I was tall, so I was at the back of the row, and it was boring, and so I draw uh that kept me awake, you know, during school.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_02: And I did some drawing uh over the years, uh, and I finally in my 50s decided I'd I'd like to learn how to paint.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_02: So I took some painting courses, uh, went to the Art Institute for some watercolor courses.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_02: I do uh, you know, birthday cards and Christmas cards.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_02: I always do a little watercolor for the kids and the grandchildren.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_02: That's the other thing about uh Montgomery Place.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_02: It's the only retirement community I went to that had the feel of kind of a neighborhood uh, you know, almost uh a little art gallery outside of different people's apartments.
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_02: And the other places looked like either a resort or an old hotel.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and you know, this it really changes the feeling about a a hallway.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_01: So I guess all of that, your, you know, your your learning, uh, you know, your your education, um family, uh, career, arts, how how do you think all of those things have have helped you to age so gracefully?
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I was I was lucky.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_02: I uh you know, I grew up in a middle class family.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and so I ended up going to a uh you know a good Catholic high school uh that introduced me to the order.
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_02: Uh my parents were supportive of my joining the order.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_02: They were supportive of my leaving, uh, although my father wanted me to go to the Air Force Academy.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_02: I can't figure out why he thought that would be good.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_02: Uh then the experience of you know working with faculty and working with uh good principals gave me the sense that you can get things done and that I I knew that I had been blessed with the intelligence and some creativity so that I could come up with new curriculum, I could design different things.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_02: And it same thing in the practice of law, I you know brought those experiences.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_02: Sometimes you have to come up with an a good argument to convince a judge and maybe uh you know, in negotiations come up with a solution to a problem that nobody's thought of.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_02: In a place like this, you can use those talents.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I've I've written articles for the messenger since November, I guess, and added a few political cartoons uh uh you know to in in enjoy my uh uh humor in response to outrageous actions uh by the government.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_02: So I think uh I bring to Montgomery Place uh a sense that I can I can do this, you know.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_02: I'm not gonna be bored, I'm not gonna uh be waiting to die.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_02: Uh it's like a a new part of my life.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_02: It's like an another chapter of my life where I get to apply my talents differently and in a and in a fun way.
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_01: So we're gonna we're gonna now move into the next segment of our podcast.
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_01: And this segment is called the MP3.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_01: And uh so it's the Montgomery Place 3 Questions, and today's MP3 is sponsored by The Art of Aging is made possible in part by Trinity Rehab.
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_00: Trinity Rehab provides more than exceptional therapy services.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_00: They're dedicated to helping people recover, regain independence, and return to the activities they enjoy.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_00: Montgomery Place is grateful for the compassionate care and expertise they bring to its residents.
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_01: So if you could go back and give your 20-year-old self one piece of advice, what would you tell yourself?
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_02: I think when I was 20 uh was when I was in the novitiate.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_02: And uh when I think back to then, I d I had very little confidence in what I could do.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_02: Uh what I mean, I could draw.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_02: Uh you know, I got A's in you know in school, but I didn't really think that uh there were good things that I could do.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_02: And I think I would and I was nervous about the future.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_02: And I think I tell my 20-year-old, you've got it.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_02: Think things are gonna develop.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_02: You you you've got talent and you'll be able to develop those talents and you're gonna you're gonna enjoy life.
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_02: So don't worry about it so much.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_02: I probably feel a lot better if somebody could have told me that.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_01: Good advice.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_01: What lesson took you a lifetime to learn?
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_02: Uh I think I'm still learning it.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_02: Uh yeah, people react differently to other people.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_02: And I was tall and I had a biting sense of humor.
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_02: And uh I learned when I was in the order uh that I I intimidated people, that I didn't mean to intimidate, that people were somewhat afraid of me.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_02: And I realized that that might be a useful thing if I'm dealing with, you know, somebody who's uh an employer.
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_02: But it it also is something you you need to understand that how you affect other people.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_02: And if you want other people to be comfortable and you want to help those people to do things, you needed to listen.
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_02: You needed to be understanding, you needed to be sympathetic.
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_02: So if I hire a new if I hired a new lawyer, I uh I wasn't to be the taskmaster, I was listen to them, understand what they were having a problem with, help them, you know, deal with it.
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_02: And uh, you know, my wife was really good about that with the kids, you know, and and with the grandchildren.
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_02: Everybody enjoyed working with her.
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_02: She was very e easy, uh easily uh someone seen as supportive.
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_02: Uh it wasn't that way.
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_02: I my my talents are a little different than that, and I'm still learning that there are times when I need to, you know, take a deep breath and and listen and and and try to understand what somebody else might be thinking or what they might need.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_02: Not necessarily what I think they might need.
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_01: Aaron Ross Powell And the final question, what brings you the most joy in your life today?
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_02: Aaron Ross Powell Well, uh I mean I I think I think my grandchildren and their interaction with uh you know the uh their parents and the world.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_02: Uh one of my grandchildren has some learning disabilities, seeing her deal with those and uh overcome dyslexia and some other things and get caught up in her schoolwork and end up in third grade with a 97th percentile vocabulary uh is really uh really fun.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_02: The two oldest are brilliant.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_02: One of them's an engineer, uh computer scientist at uh University of Illinois.
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_02: His younger sister uh was very much involved in the environmental uh movement after the first year decided to switch to engineering because she didn't just want to know about climate problems, but she wanted to be able to do something about them.
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_02: The next youngest is going into junior high school, and she's a soccer player and she's loves to be in plays, and she's very, very smart, very sensitive about things.
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_02: Uh uh and and the last of the five grandchildren is uh a kid who's probably read two or three books a week.
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_02: Uh he when when I look at my Audible account, there's always like another four books uh that he's uh and he too is uh you know gonna be somebody that'll be able to use those talents.
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_02: He's still trying to convince his mom that he should be allowed to play football.
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_02: Uh but it's it it's just seeing the interaction among those kids and realize that this is like another generation and you've had a role to play in bringing them into the world.
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_02: And yes, it's just a joy seeing them uh, you know, thrive and experience life.
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 31:21
  SPEAKER_01: Well, Peter, thank you so much for your time today and just sharing your incredible journey with us today, your life, your career.
• 31:27
  SPEAKER_01: It's a it's a reminder that really every chapter in our life does have a story.
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_01: So thank you for sharing that with us.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_01: We do have a uh a nice parting gift for you.
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_01: So our gifts are sponsored by uh Clarence Davis, who does our landscaping here.
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_01: They're an award-winning company um here in Chicago and do a great job with our gardens and thing around things around here.
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_01: And um, we've got a nice little uh cup to keep your drinks cold on a hot summer day, and a stylish art of aging art of aging jacket to keep you uh warm on a chilly day.
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_01: So thank you again for your time and just sharing your your story with us today.
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_02: All right, and thank you for uh being a CEO that the people can talk to and uh see you around and see you doing the right things.
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_00: Appreciate it.
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks again to our sponsors, Trinity Rehab, Unodyne, Life Care at Home, and Plant Moran.
• 32:21
  SPEAKER_00: Until next time, keep living fully, keep aging artfully, and keep sharing those stories that matter most.
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for watching and listening.
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_00: We will see you next time on the Art of Aging.
• 32:33
  SPEAKER_00: The Art of Aging podcast is produced by Montgomery Place.
• 32:37
  SPEAKER_00: For more information, visit MontgomeryPlace.org.